GeForce GTX 460 SE vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5850, which has a core clock speed 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 made up of 1440(288x5) SPUs, 72 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 5850 should perform a small bit faster than 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 is a lot (approximately 67%) better at texture filtering 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 bit (approximately 12%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTX 460 SE, and also should be able to handle 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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as 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, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.