GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon HD 4850 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, which has GPU core speed of 625 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR4 RAM set to run at 993 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		110 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 140 Watts (127%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 480 should in theory be quite a bit better than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 113856 (179%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 should be quite a bit (about 68%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17000 (68%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 480 is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		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 largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is worked out 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.