GeForce GTX 950M vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

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

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950M		55 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 96 Watts (175%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5850 should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 950M overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (300%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 is quite a bit (about 43%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 950M. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 950M		36560 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15640 (43%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 is much (about 59%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 950M, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 950M		14624 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8576 (59%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core 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 of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.