GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 4650 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4650 1GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 600 MHz. The GDDR3 memory is set to run at a speed of 700 MHz on this particular card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 32 TAUs and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4650 1GB		55 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 142 Watts (258%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should in theory be a lot better than the Radeon HD 4650 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4650 1GB		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 105600 (471%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be a lot (about 300%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4650 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4650 1GB		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 57600 (300%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GX2 is superior to the Radeon HD 4650 1GB, by far. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4650 1GB		4800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14400 (300%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster 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 number 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 the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's 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 rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.