GeForce GTX 870M vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5850, which comes with GPU clock speed of 725 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1440(288x5) SPUs, 72 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 870M		110 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 41 Watts (37%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5850 should in theory be quite a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 870M overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32000 (33%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M will be much (more or less 102%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5850. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 53192 (102%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 should be a small bit (about 3%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 870M, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 616 (3%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must 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 AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the 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 speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few 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.