Radeon HD 5850 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which has a core clock frequency of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 1536 SPUs, 96 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 34 Watts (23%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7870 XT should be 50% quicker than the Radeon HD 5850 overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (50%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT is a lot (about 70%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 5850. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36600 (70%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT is a lot (about 28%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5850, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6400 (28%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock 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 processed in a second.

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