Radeon HD 5850 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7970, which has a core clock frequency of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1375 MHz. It also features a 384-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 99 Watts (66%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7970 should theoretically be much superior to the Radeon HD 5850 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 136000 (106%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 is much (approximately 127%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 5850. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 66200 (127%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 should be quite a bit (about 28%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5850, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6400 (28%)

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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should 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 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 texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units 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 output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.