GeForce 9800 GTX vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which comes with GPU core speed of 625 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory running 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)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
GeForce 9800 GTX		140 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (27%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9800 GTX, in theory, should be a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		70400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 6848 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GTX is a lot (more or less 73%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		43200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18200 (73%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GTX is superior to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, but only just. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		10800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 800 (8%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card 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 ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.