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GeForce GTX 590 vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

The GeForce GTX 590 has a clock speed of 607 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 855 MHz. It also features a 384-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 512 SPUs, 64 TAUs, and 48 Raster Operation Units.

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5850, which has a clock speed of 725 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1440(288x5) SPUs, 72 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5850 151 Watts
GeForce GTX 590 365 Watts
Difference: 214 Watts (142%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 590 should in theory be quite a bit better than the Radeon HD 5850 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590 328320 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5850 128000 MB/sec
Difference: 200320 (157%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 590 should be much (about 49%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 5850. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590 77696 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5850 52200 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 25496 (49%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 590 is superior to the Radeon HD 5850, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590 58272 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5850 23200 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 35072 (151%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

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GeForce GTX 590

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 5850

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce GTX 590 Radeon HD 5850
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year March 2011 September 30, 2009
Code Name GF110 Cypress PRO
Memory 1536 MB (x2) 1024 MB
Core Speed 607 MHz (x2) 725 MHz
Memory Speed 3420 MHz (x2) 4000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 365 watts 151 watts
Bandwidth 328320 MB/sec 128000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 77696 Mtexels/sec 52200 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 58272 Mpixels/sec 23200 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 512 (x2) 1440(288x5)
Texture Mapping Units 64 (x2) 72
Render Output Units 48 (x2) 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 384-bit (x2) 256-bit
Fab Process 40 nm 40 nm
Transistors 3000 million 2154 million
Bus PCIe 2.0 x16 PCIe 2.1 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 11 DirectX 11
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.1 OpenGL 3.2

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core 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 applied in a 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. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.

Display Prices

Hide Prices

GeForce GTX 590

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 5850

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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