GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

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 makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 1440(288x5) SPUs, 72 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 99 Watts (66%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 480 will be 39% quicker than the Radeon HD 5850 overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 49408 (39%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 will be much (more or less 24%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 480. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10200 (24%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 will be quite a bit (about 45%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5850, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10400 (45%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of 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 in one second.

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