GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5850, which features GPU core speed of 725 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1440(288x5) Stream Processors, 72 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 85 Watts (56%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 280 should in theory be a little bit better than the Radeon HD 5850 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 13696 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 is a small bit (approximately 8%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4040 (8%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5850 is a better choice, though not by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3936 (20%)

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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units 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 one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.