GeForce GTX 295 vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7850, which features GPU clock speed of 860 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1024 SPUs, 64 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
GeForce GTX 295		289 Watts
	Difference: 159 Watts (122%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 295 should theoretically perform much faster than the Radeon HD 7850 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		223776 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 70176 (46%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 295 is quite a bit (about 67%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7850. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		92160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 37120 (67%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 295 is a better choice, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		32256 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4736 (17%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.