GeForce GTX 260 vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare those specifications 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 as well as 72 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Avatar

Settings:	Ultra High Quality
AA:	8x
AF:	none
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

Radeon HD 5850		52 FPS
GeForce GTX 260		32 FPS
	Difference: 20 FPS (63%)

Battlefield Bad Company 2

Settings:	High Quality
AA:	4x
AF:	8x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

Radeon HD 5850		44 FPS
GeForce GTX 260		31 FPS
	Difference: 13 FPS (42%)

Crysis

Settings:	High Detail
AA:	4x
AF:	none
Resolution:	1680x1050
Test Machine:	Intel Core i5-750,Windows 7 Ultimate x64,3 x 2GB (Source)

Radeon HD 5850		50 FPS
GeForce GTX 260		34 FPS
	Difference: 16 FPS (47%)

Left4Dead 2

Settings:	Very High
AA:	8x
AF:	16x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

Radeon HD 5850		104 FPS
GeForce GTX 260		69 FPS
	Difference: 35 FPS (51%)

Mass Effect 2

Settings:	Maximum Quality
AA:	none
AF:	8x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

Radeon HD 5850		124 FPS
GeForce GTX 260		91 FPS
	Difference: 33 FPS (36%)

Supreme Commander 2

Settings:	High
AA:	8x
AF:	16x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

Radeon HD 5850		78 FPS
GeForce GTX 260		34 FPS
	Difference: 44 FPS (129%)

Tom Clancy's Endwar

Settings:	High Quality
AA:	4x
AF:	8x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

Radeon HD 5850		30 FPS
GeForce GTX 260		24 FPS
	Difference: 6 FPS (25%)

---

Radeon HD 5850 wins

(Based entirely on the benchmarks listed above)

When combining all game benchmark scores on this page together, the Radeon HD 5850 wins overall, by 167 FPS. Please note that we do not have the results of every benchmark ever done for these cards, so the results may differ wildly in different games.

Radeon HD 5850		482 FPS
GeForce GTX 260		315 FPS
	Difference: 167 FPS (53%)

---

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
GeForce GTX 260		182 Watts
	Difference: 31 Watts (21%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5850 will be 14% faster than the GeForce GTX 260 overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 16112 (14%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 will be a lot (more or less 42%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 260. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15336 (42%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 will be much (approximately 44%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 260, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7072 (44%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. 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 lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.