GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon HD 4850 2GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, which comes with a core clock frequency of 625 MHz and a GDDR4 memory speed of 993 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		110 Watts
GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 105 Watts (95%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 470 should in theory perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 70368 (111%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 is much (more or less 36%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8992 (36%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 should be much (approximately 143%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, and also capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

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