GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB, which features core clock speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		250 Watts
	Difference: 14 Watts (6%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 280 should theoretically perform a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		127104 MB/sec
	Difference: 14592 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB should be a little bit (about 4%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1840 (4%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB is a little bit (more or less 4%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTX 280, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		20000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 736 (4%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.