GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon HD 4850 2GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, which has GPU clock speed of 625 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR4 RAM set to run at 993 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		110 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 140 Watts (127%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 480 should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 113856 (179%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 is much (approximately 68%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17000 (68%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 is much (about 236%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.