GeForce GTX 285 2GB vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5850, which has clock speeds of 725 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1440(288x5) SPUs along with 72 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

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

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 285 2GB should theoretically be quite a bit better than the Radeon HD 5850 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 is a bit (approximately 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 a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5850 is the winner, not by a very large margin though. (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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.