GeForce GTX 660 Ti vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5850, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 725 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1000 MHz on this specific model. It features 1440(288x5) SPUs along with 72 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		150 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 1 Watts (1%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 660 Ti should theoretically be a small bit superior to the Radeon HD 5850 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		144000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 Ti is much (about 96%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5850. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		102480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 50280 (96%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5850 is superior to the GeForce GTX 660 Ti, but not by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 660 Ti		21960 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1240 (6%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of 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.