GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon HD 4850 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 625 MHz. The GDDR4 RAM runs at a speed of 993 MHz on this particular card. 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)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		110 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 134 Watts (122%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 128832 (203%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB is much (more or less 98%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24408 (98%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB should be a lot (approximately 271%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, and also able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR 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, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

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