GeForce GTX 960 vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5850, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 725 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1440(288x5) SPUs, 72 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960		120 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 31 Watts (26%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 5850 should theoretically be just a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 960 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (14%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 will be a lot (about 38%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5850. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19928 (38%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 is quite a bit (about 55%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5850, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12864 (55%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.