GeForce 9800 GTX+ vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 625 MHz. The GDDR3 memory works at a speed of 993 MHz on this card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
GeForce 9800 GTX+		145 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (32%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9800 GTX+ should in theory perform just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX+		70400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 6848 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GTX+ should be a lot (approximately 89%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX+		47232 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22232 (89%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GTX+ is a better choice, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX+		11808 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1808 (18%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.