GeForce GTX 560 vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5850, which has a clock speed of 725 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1440(288x5) SPUs, 72 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 560		150 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 1 Watts (1%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 560 should theoretically perform a bit faster than the Radeon HD 5850 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		128128 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 128 (0%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 will be just a bit (about 15%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 560. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 560		45360 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6840 (15%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 will be a little bit (about 12%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 5850, and able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		25920 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2720 (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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.