GeForce GTX 295 vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5850, which features core speeds of 725 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1440(288x5) SPUs as well as 72 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
GeForce GTX 295		289 Watts
	Difference: 138 Watts (91%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 295 should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the Radeon HD 5850 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		223776 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 95776 (75%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 295 is much (more or less 77%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5850. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		92160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 39960 (77%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 295 is a lot (more or less 39%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 5850, and able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		32256 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9056 (39%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the 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 applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.