GeForce GTX 285 2GB vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5850, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 725 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1000 MHz on this specific model. It features 1440(288x5) SPUs along with 72 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		204 Watts
	Difference: 53 Watts (35%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 285 2GB should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 5850 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 285 2GB		158976 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 30976 (24%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 should be a little bit (about 1%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 285 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		51840 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 360 (1%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 should be a bit (approximately 12%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 285 2GB, and able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, 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 amount 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 worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock 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 fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.