GeForce GTX 960M vs Radeon HD 4850 2GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, which features core clock speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR4 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960M		65 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		110 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (69%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 960M should be a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 448 (1%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960M is much (more or less 75%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		43840 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18840 (75%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960M should be a lot (about 75%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		17536 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7536 (75%)

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 max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.