GeForce GTX 580 vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB, which has GPU clock speed of 625 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM set to run at 993 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		250 Watts
	Difference: 6 Watts (2%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 580 should be 51% quicker than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		127104 MB/sec
	Difference: 65280 (51%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB will be a little bit (approximately 1%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 580. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 592 (1%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 is quite a bit (more or less 85%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB, and also able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		20000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17056 (85%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better 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 maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record 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 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 output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.