4850 = what nVidia card (wattage\performance)

[Golden Dragoon]

My experiments with getting folding working with my 4850 and a gt240 I bought, have had me pulling my hair out, physx is no problem, can get that working any day of the week, but despite me having both ati+nvidia folding right now, I am fairly sure that if I look at my pc funny it will throw errors at me.
So my question is, to avoid the folding stability problems what nVidia cards are rougly comparable to the 4850 in performance, and secondarily in wattage?

I was thinking it would be something along the lines of a gtx260, however wiki lists 3 different gtx260 cards with 3 different wattages, and 2 with 216 cores and the same mem\core speed yet somehow different stats, and a 192 core version and I have no idea what would be the best?
Also the wattages worry me slightly my 4850 draws 110w acording to the specs, yet the 260's are listed as between 171-182w depending on version.

My other option is after selling my 4850, to put a few quid extra into it, and have a look at what the gt4xx cards offer in the near future, I am happy with the performance my 4850 provides however and am not too fussed about getting extra power at the res I use and the games I play.

all this varying core amounts, and differing performances in cards with the same name is why I dislike nvidia, at least with ati, a card called 4850, is a 4850 and not a 4850 with a few extra bits added or taken away

[jim]

The 192 core cards were phased out in favour of the 216 core versions, so it's probably pretty tough to get hold of a 192 these days. Not that you'd want to, out of choice - the 216 is a good chunk better.

[Domestic_Ginger]

There is a 4850 1gb and 512mb. Some with DDR5 too!

4850 512mb is the same as a GTS250 512mb. Its practically on the nose. IIRC the 4850 does AA a bit better.

The GTX260 comes in 65nm 192 cores and 65nm and 55nm versions of the 216 core. the 55nm will be the most efficient obviously. The 65nm can have its voltage controlled via software and the 55nm can only have it chnaged to preset voltages via a bios flash.

BEhardware has a great roundup of poweruse.

[Hicks12]

the 4850 was about 10% better than the 9800GTX so considering the GTX+ version added some increased clocks and a die shrink along with the gts250 giving it another bump i believe and adding some power efficiency improvements it will now be the same as a 4850.

Im not sure on the wattage though, a standard 9800GTX used like 160w comp-ared to the 4850 110 and if you had the sapphire vapor x version then that was like 90W !. GTS 250 is what you should look at tbh.

If you cant find one cheap then you should look for a gtx 260 as that is about 20%+ faster (onpar with 4870 so better than the 4850 by a good margin).

[Golden Dragoon]

There is a 4850 1gb and 512mb. Some with DDR5 too!

lol point taken, sort of, I was referring more to the core than the memory, different manufacturers have always played about with memory sizes\types

I thought the 250 was a rebranded 9800, based on a older core? I know some reviews I read ages ago had the 4850 beating 9800's

[Domestic_Ginger]

I thought the 250 was a rebranded 9800, based on a older core? I know some reviews I read ages ago had the 4850 beating 9800's

They are all g92's but the gts 250 has a die shrink iirc 65nm to 55nm? They then upped the clock speeds and included slightly faster memory (from the 8800gts 512's). The GTS250 is the same as the 9800gtx+. The 9800gtx and 8800gts 512 are the larger die size but the 9800gtx came with the slightly faster memory.

The whole picture on one chart (thanks techarp!).