GeForce 9800 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 4850 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, which features a GPU core clock speed of 625 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR4 RAM running at 993 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up 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 9800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		110 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (5%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4850 1GB will be 10% faster than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 5952 (10%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GT 512MB should be quite a bit (about 34%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8600 (34%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4850 1GB is a better choice, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 400 (4%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. 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 quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.