GeForce GTX 860M vs Radeon HD 4850 2GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, which features a core clock frequency of 625 MHz and a GDDR4 memory speed of 993 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 860M		45 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		110 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (144%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 860M should in theory perform a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 448 (1%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M will be a lot (more or less 206%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		76512 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 51512 (206%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M should be a lot (about 28%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		12752 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2752 (28%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount 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 one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel 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.