GeForce GTX 950 vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 625 MHz. The GDDR3 memory works at a frequency of 993 MHz on this model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950		90 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		250 Watts
	Difference: 160 Watts (178%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB should in theory perform a small bit faster than the GeForce GTX 950 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		127104 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950		105728 MB/sec
	Difference: 21376 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB is a little bit (approximately 2%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 950. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 950		49152 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 848 (2%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 950 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		32768 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.