GeForce GTX 950 vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 625 MHz. The GDDR3 memory works at a speed of 993 MHz on this particular card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950		90 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		250 Watts
	Difference: 160 Watts (178%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB will be 20% faster than the GeForce GTX 950 in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		127104 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950		105728 MB/sec
	Difference: 21376 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB is a small bit (more or less 2%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 950. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 950		49152 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 848 (2%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950 is quite a bit (approximately 64%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB, and also capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		32768 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		20000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12768 (64%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.