GeForce GTX 850M vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare those specs 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 is set to run at a speed of 1000 MHz on this specific model. It features 1440(288x5) SPUs as well as 72 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 850M		40 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 111 Watts (278%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 5850 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 850M overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (300%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 should be much (about 49%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 850M. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		35040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17160 (49%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 is much (about 66%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce GTX 850M, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		14016 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9184 (66%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's 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 applied 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 better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.