GeForce GTX 570 vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5850, which features GPU clock speed of 725 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1440(288x5) SPUs, 72 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
GeForce GTX 570		219 Watts
	Difference: 68 Watts (45%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 570 should theoretically perform a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 5850 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		152000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 24000 (19%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 should be just a bit (about 19%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 570. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 570		43920 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8280 (19%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 570 is superior to the Radeon HD 5850, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		29280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6080 (26%)

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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.