GeForce GTX 590 vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7850, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 860 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1200 MHz on this specific model. It features 1024 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

GeForce GTX 590		6680 points
Radeon HD 7850		5200 points
	Difference: 1480 (28%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
GeForce GTX 590		365 Watts
	Difference: 235 Watts (181%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 590 should theoretically be much superior to the Radeon HD 7850 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		328320 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 174720 (114%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 590 is quite a bit (about 41%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 7850. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		77696 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22656 (41%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 590 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 30752 (112%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.