GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7850, which has a clock frequency of 860 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1200 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1024 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon HD 7850		5200 points
GeForce GTX 480		3650 points
	Difference: 1550 (42%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 120 Watts (92%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 480 is 16% faster than the Radeon HD 7850 in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 23808 (16%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 is a lot (about 31%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 480. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13040 (31%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 will be quite a bit (about 22%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7850, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6080 (22%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes 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 potential to get to the max fill rate.