GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 625 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM is set to run at a speed of 993 MHz on this particular card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 480 will be 40% faster than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		127104 MB/sec
	Difference: 50304 (40%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB is a small bit (more or less 19%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 480. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8000 (19%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 480 is superior to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		20000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13600 (68%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.