GeForce GTX 285 2GB vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5850, which comes with GPU 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 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 285 2GB should be 24% quicker than the Radeon HD 5850 overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 should be a small bit (approximately 1%) more effective at texture filtering 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 resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5850 is superior to the GeForce GTX 285 2GB, 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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.