Radeon HD 5850 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 280X, which features a GPU core clock speed of 850 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1500 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also features 2048 Stream Processors, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 99 Watts (66%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 280X should in theory be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 5850 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 160000 (125%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be a lot (approximately 108%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5850. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 56600 (108%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X is a bit (more or less 17%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5850, and also able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (17%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.