Radeon HD 5850 vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R7 260X, which features a clock frequency of 1100 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1625 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 896 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 36 Watts (31%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 5850, in theory, should be a lot faster than the Radeon R7 260X overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
	Difference: 24000 (23%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X should be just a bit (approximately 18%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 5850. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9400 (18%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5850 is superior to the Radeon R7 260X, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (32%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, 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 AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core 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 rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.