GeForce 9800 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which comes with core clock speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (5%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4850 512MB will be 10% quicker than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 5952 (10%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GT 512MB is a lot (approximately 34%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8600 (34%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 512MB is a little bit (more or less 4%) better at FSAA than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 400 (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.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, 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, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

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