GeForce GTX 580 vs Radeon HD 4650 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4650 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 600 MHz. The DDR2 RAM runs at a frequency of 500 MHz on this particular card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 32 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4650 512MB		55 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 189 Watts (344%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 580 should theoretically be much better than the Radeon HD 4650 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4650 512MB		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 176384 (1102%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 should be much (more or less 157%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4650 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4650 512MB		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30208 (157%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4650 512MB		4800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 32256 (672%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should 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, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core 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 processed per second.

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