GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which features a clock speed of 625 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 993 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 134 Watts (122%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 128832 (203%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB is much (about 98%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24408 (98%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling 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 graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.