GeForce GTX 960M vs Radeon HD 4850 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, which features a clock frequency of 625 MHz and a GDDR4 memory speed of 993 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It features 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960M		65 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		110 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (69%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 960M is 1% quicker than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960M should be a lot (more or less 75%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		43840 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		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 a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		17536 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video 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 Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.