GeForce GTX 980M vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which features GPU core speed of 625 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM set to run at 993 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised 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 980M		100 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (10%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 980M should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 64448 (101%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M will be much (more or less 299%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 74648 (299%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980M is superior to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 56432 (564%)

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 transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. 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 memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, 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 maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs 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 also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.