GeForce GTX 860M vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, which comes with a core clock speed of 625 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 993 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 860M		45 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		250 Watts
	Difference: 205 Watts (456%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB is 99% faster than the GeForce GTX 860M overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		127104 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 63104 (99%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M should be much (about 53%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		76512 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		50000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 26512 (53%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB is quite a bit (approximately 57%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 860M, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		20000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		12752 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7248 (57%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. 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 also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.