GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon HD 4650 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4650 512MB, which has core clock speeds of 600 MHz on the GPU, and 500 MHz on the 512 MB of DDR2 RAM. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 32 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4650 512MB		55 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 189 Watts (344%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB should in theory be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4650 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4650 512MB		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 176384 (1102%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB will be quite a bit (approximately 157%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4650 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4650 512MB		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30208 (157%)

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 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 maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported 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 memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated 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 card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.