GeForce GTX 980M vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, which features a clock frequency of 625 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 993 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980M		100 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		250 Watts
	Difference: 150 Watts (150%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 980M should perform a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		127104 MB/sec
	Difference: 896 (1%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M should be much (approximately 99%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		50000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 49648 (99%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M should be quite a bit (more or less 232%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		20000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 46432 (232%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.