GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, which features core clock speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		250 Watts
	Difference: 14 Watts (6%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 280 should be 11% quicker than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		127104 MB/sec
	Difference: 14592 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB should be a small bit (about 4%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1840 (4%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB is the winner, though only just barely. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		20000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 736 (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.

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per 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 figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's 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 rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.