Radeon HD 5850 vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R7 260X, which has a core clock frequency of 1100 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1625 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 896 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 36 Watts (31%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 5850 should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the Radeon R7 260X in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
	Difference: 24000 (23%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X should be a little bit (approximately 18%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 5850. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9400 (18%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 is a lot (approximately 32%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon R7 260X, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (32%)

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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of 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 a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.