GeForce GTX 580 vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7850, which comes with a clock speed of 860 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1200 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 1024 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

Radeon HD 7850		5200 points
GeForce GTX 580		4956 points
	Difference: 244 (5%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 114 Watts (88%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 580 should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 7850 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 38784 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 should be a bit (more or less 11%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 580. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5632 (11%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 is a lot (about 35%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 7850, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9536 (35%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of 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 per second.

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