GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 625 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM is set to run at a speed of 993 MHz on this specific model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator 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, the GeForce GTX 480 should be much faster 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 should be a lot (approximately 68%) faster with regards to 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

The GeForce GTX 480 will be much (more or less 236%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (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 max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour 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 fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.