Radeon HD 5850 vs Radeon R9 390 8G

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 390 8G, which features core speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 8192 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2560 SPUs along with 160 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
Radeon R9 390 8G		275 Watts
	Difference: 124 Watts (82%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 390 8G should in theory be much faster than the Radeon HD 5850 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		384000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 256000 (200%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390 8G will be much (about 207%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 5850. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		160000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 107800 (207%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 390 8G is quite a bit (more or less 176%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5850, and will be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		64000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 40800 (176%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

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