GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 625 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a frequency of 993 MHz on this specific card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 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

In theory, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB should be 203% faster than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (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 should be much (more or less 98%) more effective at texture filtering 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 running with high levels of AA 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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.