GeForce GTX 285 2GB vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5850, which features a GPU core clock speed of 725 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 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 285 2GB		204 Watts
	Difference: 53 Watts (35%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 285 2GB will be 24% faster than the Radeon HD 5850 in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 285 2GB		158976 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 30976 (24%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 will be a small bit (about 1%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 285 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		51840 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 360 (1%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5850 is superior to the GeForce GTX 285 2GB, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		20736 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2464 (12%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock 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 rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.