GeForce GTX 580 vs Radeon HD 4850 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, which has a clock speed of 625 MHz and a GDDR4 memory frequency of 993 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		110 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 134 Watts (122%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 580 should in theory be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 128832 (203%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 should be a lot (approximately 98%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24408 (98%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 will be quite a bit (about 271%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, and also able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		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 maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated 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 fill 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 max fill rate.