GeForce GTX 285 1GB vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5850, which has a core clock speed of 725 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1440(288x5) SPUs, 72 Texture Address Units, 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 285 1GB		204 Watts
	Difference: 53 Watts (35%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 285 1GB should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 5850 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 285 1GB		158976 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 30976 (24%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 should be just a bit (more or less 1%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 285 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		51840 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 360 (1%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 is a small bit (about 12%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTX 285 1GB, and capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		20736 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2464 (12%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.