GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which has a clock frequency of 625 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 993 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 480 should be 179% quicker than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (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 (about 68%) better at anisotropic 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 running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 480 is the winner, and very much so. (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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past 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 RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of 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.