GeForce GTX 560 Ti vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

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

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
GeForce GTX 560 Ti		170 Watts
	Difference: 19 Watts (13%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 560 Ti will be 0% quicker than the Radeon HD 5850 overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560 Ti		128256 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 256 (0%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 Ti should be a little bit (more or less 1%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 5850. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560 Ti		52608 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 408 (1%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 560 Ti is a better choice, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560 Ti		26304 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3104 (13%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. 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 memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.