GeForce GTX 580 vs Radeon HD 4850 2GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, which features core speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR4 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		110 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 134 Watts (122%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 580 should theoretically perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 128832 (203%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 will be much (about 98%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24408 (98%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 is much (about 271%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 27056 (271%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.