GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon HD 4850 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 625 MHz. The GDDR4 RAM works at a frequency of 993 MHz on this model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		110 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 140 Watts (127%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 480 will be 179% faster than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 113856 (179%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 should be much (about 68%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17000 (68%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 is much (more or less 236%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23600 (236%)

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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.