Radeon HD 5850 vs Radeon HD 7770

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7770, which has core speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1125 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 640 SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7770		80 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 71 Watts (89%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5850 will be 78% quicker than the Radeon HD 7770 in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7770		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 56000 (78%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 should be quite a bit (approximately 31%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 7770. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7770		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12200 (31%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5850 is superior to the Radeon HD 7770, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7770		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7200 (45%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock 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 fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.