Radeon HD 5870 vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7850, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 860 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1200 MHz on this card. It features 1024 SPUs along with 64 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 58 Watts (45%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same memory bandwidth, so theoretically they should perform exactly the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 will be quite a bit (more or less 24%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 7850. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12960 (24%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7850 is superior to the Radeon HD 5870, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 320 (1%)

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

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core 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 rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.