GeForce GTX 285 1GB vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5870, which comes with clock speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1600(320x5) SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Avatar

Settings:	Ultra High Quality
AA:	8x
AF:	none
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

Radeon HD 5870		62 FPS
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		42 FPS
	Difference: 20 FPS (48%)

Battlefield Bad Company 2

Settings:	High Quality
AA:	4x
AF:	8x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

Radeon HD 5870		58 FPS
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		40 FPS
	Difference: 18 FPS (45%)

Crysis

Settings:	Very High
AA:	none
AF:	none
Resolution:	1680x1050
Test Machine:	Intel Core i7-975 Extreme, 6GB RAM, Windows 7 x64, DirectX 11 (Source)

Radeon HD 5870		41 FPS
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		29 FPS
	Difference: 12 FPS (41%)

Crysis Warhead

Settings:	Gamer Setting
AA:	none
AF:	none
Resolution:	1680 x 1050
Test Machine:	Intel Core i7 920 ,Vista Ultimate x64 SP1 , 3x2GB Ram (Source)

Radeon HD 5870		68 FPS
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		48 FPS
	Difference: 20 FPS (42%)

Fallout 3

Settings:	Very High Quality
AA:	8x
AF:	16x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

Radeon HD 5870		85 FPS
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		66 FPS
	Difference: 19 FPS (29%)

Left4Dead

Settings:	Very High Quality
AA:	8x
AF:	16x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

Radeon HD 5870		119 FPS
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		77 FPS
	Difference: 42 FPS (55%)

Mass Effect 2

Settings:	Maximum Quality
AA:	none
AF:	8x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

Radeon HD 5870		150 FPS
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		121 FPS
	Difference: 29 FPS (24%)

Supreme Commander 2

Settings:	High
AA:	8x
AF:	16x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

Radeon HD 5870		92 FPS
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		44 FPS
	Difference: 48 FPS (109%)

Tom Clancy's Endwar

Settings:	High Quality
AA:	4x
AF:	8x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

GeForce GTX 285 1GB		30 FPS
Radeon HD 5870		30 FPS
	Difference: 0 FPS (0%)

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Radeon HD 5870 wins

(Based entirely on the benchmarks listed above)

When combining all game benchmark scores on this page together, the Radeon HD 5870 wins overall, by 208 FPS. Please note that we do not have the results of every benchmark ever done for these cards, so the results may differ wildly in different games.

Radeon HD 5870		705 FPS
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		497 FPS
	Difference: 208 FPS (42%)

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		204 Watts
	Difference: 16 Watts (9%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 285 1GB will be 4% faster than the Radeon HD 5870 in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 285 1GB		158976 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 5376 (4%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 should be quite a bit (approximately 31%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 285 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		51840 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16160 (31%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 is a lot (more or less 31%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce GTX 285 1GB, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		20736 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6464 (31%)

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

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.