GeForce 9800 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 625 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 993 MHz on this model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		105 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		250 Watts
	Difference: 145 Watts (138%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB should in theory be quite a bit superior to the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		127104 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 69504 (121%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB will be much (approximately 49%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16400 (49%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB should be a lot (about 108%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		20000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10400 (108%)

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 MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 can be applied in one second. This 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 card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. 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 also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.