GeForce GTX 295 vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

The GeForce GTX 295 comes with a clock frequency of 576 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 999 MHz. It also uses a 448-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 240 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 28 ROPs.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5850, which comes with a core clock frequency of 725 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1440(288x5) SPUs, 72 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Price Comparison

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords, and might not be the exact same card listed on this page. We have no control over the accuracy of their search results.

GeForce GTX 295 Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Radeon HD 5850 Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Specifications

Model	GeForce GTX 295	Radeon HD 5850
Manufacturer	nVidia	ATi
Year	January 8, 2009	September 30, 2009
Code Name	G200b	Cypress PRO
Fab Process	55 nm	40 nm
Bus	PCIe x16 2.0	PCIe 2.1 x16
Memory	896 MB (x2)	1024 MB
Core Speed	576 MHz (x2)	725 MHz
Shader Speed	1242 MHz (x2)	(N/A) MHz
Memory Speed	999 MHz (x2)	1000 MHz
Unified Shaders	240 (x2)	1440(288x5)
Texture Mapping Units	80 (x2)	72
Render Output Units	28 (x2)	32
Bus Type	GDDR3	GDDR5
Bus Width	448-bit (x2)	256-bit
DirectX Version	DirectX 10	DirectX 11
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.1	OpenGL 3.2
Power (Max TDP)	289 watts	151 watts
Shader Model	4.0	5.0
Bandwidth	223776 MB/sec	128000 MB/sec
Texel Rate	92160 Mtexels/sec	52200 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	32256 Mpixels/sec	23200 Mpixels/sec

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (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 interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 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 higher this number, the better the card will be at handling 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 that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out 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 filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.