GeForce GTX 285 2GB vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		204 Watts
	Difference: 74 Watts (57%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 285 2GB, in theory, should be a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 7850 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 285 2GB		158976 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 5376 (4%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 is a little bit (approximately 6%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 285 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		51840 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (6%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7850 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		20736 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6784 (33%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.