GeForce GTX 965M vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5850, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 725 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1000 MHz on this card. It features 1440(288x5) SPUs as well as 72 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 965M		60 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 91 Watts (152%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5850 should in theory be a lot better than the GeForce GTX 965M in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 965M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (100%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 965M should be a small bit (approximately 16%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5850. (explain)

GeForce GTX 965M		60416 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8216 (16%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 965M is much (approximately 30%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 5850, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 965M		30208 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7008 (30%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.