GeForce GTX 960 vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 625 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a speed of 993 MHz on this particular model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 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 960		120 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (9%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 960 should theoretically be much faster than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 48448 (76%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 will be much (more or less 189%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 47128 (189%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 will be quite a bit (about 261%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 26064 (261%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once 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, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.