GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which comes with core clock speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

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

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 480 should in theory be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB in general. (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%) more effective at 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

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 480 is a better choice, by a large margin. (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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.