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GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

The GeForce 9800 GX2 uses a 65 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 600 MHz. The GDDR3 memory runs at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this particular model. It features 128 SPUs as well as 64 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which has a GPU core clock speed of 625 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM running at 993 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB 110 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2 197 Watts
Difference: 87 Watts (79%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should be much faster than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2 128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB 63552 MB/sec
Difference: 64448 (101%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is quite a bit (more or less 207%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2 76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB 25000 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 51800 (207%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GX2 is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2 19200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB 10000 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 9200 (92%)

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

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GeForce 9800 GX2

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce 9800 GX2 Radeon HD 4850 512MB
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year Mar 2008 Jun 25, 2008
Code Name G92 RV770 PRO
Memory 512 MB (x2) 512 MB
Core Speed 600 MHz (x2) 625 MHz
Memory Speed 2000 MHz (x2) 1986 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 197 watts 110 watts
Bandwidth 128000 MB/sec 63552 MB/sec
Texel Rate 76800 Mtexels/sec 25000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 19200 Mpixels/sec 10000 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 128 (x2) 800(160x5)
Texture Mapping Units 64 (x2) 40
Render Output Units 16 (x2) 16
Bus Type GDDR3 GDDR3
Bus Width 256-bit (x2) 256-bit
Fab Process 65 nm 55 nm
Transistors 754 million 956 million
Bus PCIe x16 2.0 PCIe 2.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10 DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 3.0

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce 9800 GX2

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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