GeForce GTX 650 vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5850, which comes with a clock speed of 725 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1440(288x5) SPUs, 72 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 650		64 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 87 Watts (136%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5850 should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 650 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 650		80000 MB/sec
	Difference: 48000 (60%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 should be much (approximately 54%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 650. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 650		33856 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18344 (54%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5850 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 650		16928 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6272 (37%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses 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 higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most 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 ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.