GeForce GTX 950 vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, which features GPU core speed of 625 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR3 RAM running at 993 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950		90 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		250 Watts
	Difference: 160 Watts (178%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB should theoretically be a small bit superior to the GeForce GTX 950 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		127104 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950		105728 MB/sec
	Difference: 21376 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB is a small bit (more or less 2%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 950. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 950		49152 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 848 (2%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950 should be a lot (more or less 64%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, and also capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		32768 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		20000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12768 (64%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result 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 AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number 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 speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on 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.