GeForce 9800 GTX+ vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5850, which comes with core speeds of 725 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1440(288x5) SPUs as well as 72 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GTX+		145 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 6 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5850 will be 82% faster than the GeForce 9800 GTX+ overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX+		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 57600 (82%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 will be a little bit (approximately 11%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 9800 GTX+. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX+		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4968 (11%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5850 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX+		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11392 (96%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core 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 is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.