GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 625 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a speed of 993 MHz on this model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 105 Watts (95%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 470, in theory, should be much faster than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 70368 (111%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 will be much (about 36%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8992 (36%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 will be a lot (more or less 143%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14280 (143%)

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.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.