GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5850 should be 18% quicker than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 is much (approximately 43%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM). (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		36400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15800 (43%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5850 is superior to the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM), but only just. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.