GeForce GTX 570 vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which features a core clock frequency of 625 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 993 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up 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 512MB		110 Watts
GeForce GTX 570		219 Watts
	Difference: 109 Watts (99%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 570 should be much faster than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		152000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 88448 (139%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 570 is a lot (about 76%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		43920 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18920 (76%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 570 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		29280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19280 (193%)

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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card 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 card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.