GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon HD 4850 2GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, which comes with GPU core speed of 625 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR4 memory running at 993 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		110 Watts
GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 105 Watts (95%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 470 should be 111% quicker than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 70368 (111%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 should be a lot (more or less 36%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8992 (36%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 should be quite a bit (approximately 143%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14280 (143%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.