Radeon HD 5850 vs Radeon HD 7770

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7770, which features GPU clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1125 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 640 Stream Processors, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7770		80 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 71 Watts (89%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5850 should be much faster than the Radeon HD 7770 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7770		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 56000 (78%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 is a lot (about 31%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 7770. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7770		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12200 (31%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5850 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7770		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7200 (45%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock 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 fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.