Radeon HD 5850 vs Radeon R9 285

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 285, which features GPU core speed of 918 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1375 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1792 Stream Processors, 112 TAUs, 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 R9 285		190 Watts
	Difference: 39 Watts (26%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 285 should theoretically perform much faster than the Radeon HD 5850 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 285		176000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 48000 (38%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 285 is quite a bit (approximately 97%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 5850. (explain)

Radeon R9 285		102816 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 50616 (97%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 285 will be much (about 27%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 5850, and also capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 285		29376 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6176 (27%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.