Radeon HD 5850 vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 270X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1400 MHz on this card. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
	Difference: 29 Watts (19%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 270X is 40% quicker than the Radeon HD 5850 in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 51200 (40%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X will be much (more or less 53%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 5850. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 27800 (53%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X should be a lot (approximately 38%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5850, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8800 (38%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.