GeForce GTX 465 vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB, which has a clock speed of 625 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 993 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 465		200 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		250 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB will be 24% faster than the GeForce GTX 465 overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		127104 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 465		102592 MB/sec
	Difference: 24512 (24%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB will be quite a bit (about 87%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 465. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 465		26708 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 23292 (87%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB is the winner, though not by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		20000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 465		19424 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 576 (3%)

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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour 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 is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.