GeForce 9800 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 4850 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, which has a core clock speed of 625 MHz and a GDDR4 memory speed of 993 MHz. It also features 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 9800 GT 1GB		105 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		110 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (5%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4850 1GB should perform a small bit faster than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GT 1GB is much (about 34%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4850 1GB is the winner, but only just. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.