GeForce GTX 580 vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5850, which has a clock frequency of 725 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed 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 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 93 Watts (62%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 580 should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 5850 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64384 (50%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 is just a bit (more or less 6%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 580. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2792 (6%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 will be a lot (approximately 60%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5850, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13856 (60%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs 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 output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.