GeForce GTX 580 vs Radeon HD 4850 2GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 625 MHz. The GDDR4 memory runs at a frequency of 993 MHz on this card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

In theory, the GeForce GTX 580 should be quite a bit faster than 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 should be quite a bit (about 98%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering 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

The GeForce GTX 580 should be quite a bit (about 271%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. 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 many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.