GeForce GTX 460 SE vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5850, which uses a 40 nm design. ATi has clocked the core frequency at 725 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this specific card. It features 1440(288x5) SPUs as well as 72 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		150 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 1 Watts (1%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 5850 should in theory be a little bit superior to the GeForce GTX 460 SE in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (18%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 will be a lot (about 67%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 460 SE. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 21000 (67%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 will be a small bit (approximately 12%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 460 SE, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (12%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 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 processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. 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 lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.