GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, which comes with clock speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		250 Watts
	Difference: 6 Watts (2%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB should in theory be much faster than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		127104 MB/sec
	Difference: 65280 (51%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB is a small bit (more or less 1%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 592 (1%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		20000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17056 (85%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the 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 better 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 can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant 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.