GeForce GTX 275 vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

The GeForce GTX 275 uses a 55 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 633 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1134 MHz on this specific model. It features 240 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 28 ROPs.

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5850, which features core clock speeds of 725 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1440(288x5) SPUs along with 72 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Price Comparison

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords, and might not be the exact same card listed on this page. We have no control over the accuracy of their search results.

GeForce GTX 275 Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Radeon HD 5850 Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Specifications

Model	GeForce GTX 275	Radeon HD 5850
Manufacturer	nVidia	ATi
Year	April 9, 2009	September 30, 2009
Code Name	G200b	Cypress PRO
Fab Process	55 nm	40 nm
Bus	PCIe x16 2.0	PCIe 2.1 x16
Memory	896 MB	1024 MB
Core Speed	633 MHz	725 MHz
Shader Speed	1404 MHz	(N/A) MHz
Memory Speed	1134 MHz	1000 MHz
Unified Shaders	240	1440(288x5)
Texture Mapping Units	80	72
Render Output Units	28	32
Bus Type	GDDR3	GDDR5
Bus Width	448-bit	256-bit
DirectX Version	DirectX 10	DirectX 11
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.1	OpenGL 3.2
Power (Max TDP)	219 watts	151 watts
Shader Model	4.0	5.0
Bandwidth	127008 MB/sec	128000 MB/sec
Texel Rate	50640 Mtexels/sec	52200 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	17724 Mpixels/sec	23200 Mpixels/sec

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 are 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 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 maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.