Radeon HD 5850 vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 270, which features a core clock speed of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1400 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270		150 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 1 Watts (1%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 270 should be much faster than the Radeon HD 5850 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 will be quite a bit (more or less 38%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5850. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19800 (38%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (24%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.