GeForce GTX 880M vs Radeon HD 4850 2GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, which has a core clock speed of 625 MHz and a GDDR4 memory speed of 993 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		110 Watts
GeForce GTX 880M		130 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (18%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 880M should be 101% quicker than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 880M		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 64448 (101%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 880M should be a lot (approximately 388%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 880M		122112 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 97112 (388%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 880M is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 880M		30528 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20528 (205%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics 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 maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one 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 - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.