GeForce GTX 950 vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, which comes with a core clock frequency of 625 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 993 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950		90 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		250 Watts
	Difference: 160 Watts (178%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB should theoretically be a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 950 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		127104 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950		105728 MB/sec
	Difference: 21376 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB should be just a bit (about 2%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 950. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 950		49152 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 848 (2%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 950 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		32768 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		20000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12768 (64%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be 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 this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock 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 also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.