GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 4850 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, which features a GPU core clock speed of 625 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR4 memory set to run at 993 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised 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)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		110 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 87 Watts (79%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 9800 GX2 will be 101% quicker than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 64448 (101%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be a lot (approximately 207%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 51800 (207%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GX2 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		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

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.