GeForce GTX 960M vs Radeon HD 4850 2GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 625 MHz. The GDDR4 memory is set to run 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

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960M		65 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		110 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (69%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 960M should in theory be a small bit superior to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 448 (1%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960M will be much (approximately 75%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		43840 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18840 (75%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 960M is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		17536 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7536 (75%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result 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 anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen 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 amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 the video card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.