GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which has GPU clock speed of 625 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory set to run at 993 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 140 Watts (127%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 480 should in theory be much better than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 113856 (179%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 is a lot (more or less 68%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17000 (68%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 will be much (more or less 236%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23600 (236%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.