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GeForce GTX 260 vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

The GeForce GTX 260 features clock speeds of 576 MHz on the GPU, and 999 MHz on the 896 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 192 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 28 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5850, which has 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 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

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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

The Radeon HD 5850, in theory, should be just a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 260 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 is quite a bit (approximately 42%) better at texture 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 a lot (more or less 44%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTX 260, and should be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (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

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GeForce GTX 260

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Radeon HD 5850

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Specifications

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Model	GeForce GTX 260	Radeon HD 5850
Manufacturer	nVidia	AMD
Year	June 16, 2008	September 30, 2009
Code Name	G200	Cypress PRO
Memory	896 MB	1024 MB
Core Speed	576 MHz	725 MHz
Memory Speed	1998 MHz	4000 MHz
Power (Max TDP)	182 watts	151 watts
Bandwidth	111888 MB/sec	128000 MB/sec
Texel Rate	36864 Mtexels/sec	52200 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	16128 Mpixels/sec	23200 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders	192	1440(288x5)
Texture Mapping Units	64	72
Render Output Units	28	32
Bus Type	GDDR3	GDDR5
Bus Width	448-bit	256-bit
Fab Process	65 nm	40 nm
Transistors	1400 million	2154 million
Bus	PCIe x16 2.0	PCIe 2.1 x16
DirectX Version	DirectX 10	DirectX 11
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.1	OpenGL 3.2

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

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

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