GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5850, which features GPU core speed of 725 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1440(288x5) Stream Processors, 72 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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

The GeForce GTX 280, in theory, should perform a small bit faster 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 should be a little bit (about 8%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5850 is superior to the GeForce GTX 280, 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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses 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, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.