GeForce GTX 275 vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5850, which has a core clock frequency of 725 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 1440(288x5) SPUs, 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 275		219 Watts
	Difference: 68 Watts (45%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 5850 should in theory be just a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 275 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 275		127008 MB/sec
	Difference: 992 (1%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 is a bit (approximately 3%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 275. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 275		50640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1560 (3%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5850 is superior to the GeForce GTX 275, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 275		17724 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5476 (31%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.