GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5850, which features a GPU core clock speed of 725 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1440(288x5) Stream Processors, 72 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 6 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 970 will be 75% quicker than the Radeon HD 5850 overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (75%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 should be a lot (about 109%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5850. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 57000 (109%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 44000 (190%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past 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, it should be multiplied by 2 once 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 AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated 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 filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.