Radeon HD 5670 vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5850, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 725 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1000 MHz on this card. It features 1440(288x5) SPUs along with 72 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5670		61 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 90 Watts (148%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 5850 should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 5670 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5670		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 is much (approximately 237%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 5670. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5670		15500 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36700 (237%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 will be a lot (more or less 274%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 5670, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5670		6200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17000 (274%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends 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.