GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, which comes with GPU clock speed of 625 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR3 memory running at 993 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		171 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		250 Watts
	Difference: 79 Watts (46%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB should theoretically be a little bit faster than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		127104 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 15216 (14%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB should be quite a bit (about 21%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		41472 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8528 (21%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB is superior to the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		20000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3872 (24%)

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 max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip 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 core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.