GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, which comes with core clock speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		250 Watts
	Difference: 14 Watts (6%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 280 should be a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		127104 MB/sec
	Difference: 14592 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB is a little bit (approximately 4%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1840 (4%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB is a better choice, but only just. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		20000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 736 (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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be 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 the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many 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.