GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5850, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 725 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1000 MHz on this model. It features 1440(288x5) SPUs as well as 72 Texture Address Units 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 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 93 Watts (62%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB should in theory be much superior to the Radeon HD 5850 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64384 (50%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 will be just a bit (more or less 6%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2792 (6%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB is much (approximately 60%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5850, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied 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 card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.