GeForce 9800 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 4850 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, which has clock speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR4 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		105 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		110 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (5%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4850 2GB should theoretically be a little bit faster than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 5952 (10%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GT 1GB is quite a bit (more or less 34%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		33600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8600 (34%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4850 2GB is the winner, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. 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 bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.