GeForce GTX 860M vs Radeon HD 4850 2GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 625 MHz. The GDDR4 memory runs at a frequency of 993 MHz on this model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 860M		45 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		110 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (144%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 860M should be 1% faster than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 448 (1%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M will be much (about 206%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		76512 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 51512 (206%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M is much (more or less 28%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		12752 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2752 (28%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better 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 in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.