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GeForce GTX 960 vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

The GeForce GTX 960 makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 1127 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1750 MHz on this card. It features 1024 SPUs as well as 64 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5850, which features a clock frequency of 725 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1440(288x5) SPUs, 72 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960 120 Watts
Radeon HD 5850 151 Watts
Difference: 31 Watts (26%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5850 should be 14% faster than the GeForce GTX 960 overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850 128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960 112000 MB/sec
Difference: 16000 (14%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 should be much (about 38%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5850. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960 72128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5850 52200 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 19928 (38%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 960 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960 36064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5850 23200 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 12864 (55%)

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

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GeForce GTX 960

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 5850

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce GTX 960 Radeon HD 5850
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year January 2015 September 30, 2009
Code Name GM206 Cypress PRO
Memory 2048 MB 1024 MB
Core Speed 1127 MHz 725 MHz
Memory Speed 7000 MHz 4000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 120 watts 151 watts
Bandwidth 112000 MB/sec 128000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 72128 Mtexels/sec 52200 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 36064 Mpixels/sec 23200 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 1024 1440(288x5)
Texture Mapping Units 64 72
Render Output Units 32 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 128-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 28 nm 40 nm
Transistors 2940 million 2154 million
Bus PCIe 3.0 x16 PCIe 2.1 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 12.0 DirectX 11
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.5 OpenGL 3.2

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce GTX 960

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 5850

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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