GeForce GTX 560 vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5850, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 725 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1440(288x5) SPUs, 72 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 560		150 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 1 Watts (1%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 560, in theory, should be a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 5850 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		128128 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 128 (0%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 will be a bit (more or less 15%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 560. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 560		45360 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6840 (15%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 will be a little bit (more or less 12%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 5850, and will be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		25920 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2720 (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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.