GeForce GTX 580 vs Radeon HD 4850 2GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, which has GPU core speed of 625 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR4 RAM running at 993 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		110 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 134 Watts (122%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 580 should in theory be quite a bit superior to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 128832 (203%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 is much (approximately 98%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24408 (98%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 27056 (271%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.