GeForce GTX 580 vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7850, which has a GPU core clock speed of 860 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1024 Stream Processors, 64 TAUs, 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

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

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 580 will be 25% faster than the Radeon HD 7850 in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 will be a small bit (about 11%) faster with regards to AF 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%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7850, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (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 megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.