Radeon HD 5770 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 frequency at 725 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1000 MHz on this model. It features 1440(288x5) SPUs along with 72 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5770		108 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 43 Watts (40%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5850 will be 67% faster than the Radeon HD 5770 overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5770		76800 MB/sec
	Difference: 51200 (67%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 will be quite a bit (about 54%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5770. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5770		34000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18200 (54%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5850 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5770		13600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9600 (71%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.