GeForce GTX 560 vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5850, which features GPU core speed of 725 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1440(288x5) SPUs, 72 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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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

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 560 is 0% quicker than the Radeon HD 5850 overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 will be a little bit (more or less 15%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 560. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 560 is the winner, but not by far. (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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at 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 its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.