GeForce GTX 1050 3GB vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5850, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 725 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1000 MHz on this model. It features 1440(288x5) SPUs as well as 72 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 76 Watts (101%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 5850 should in theory be quite a bit better than the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		86016 MB/sec
	Difference: 41984 (49%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1050 3GB should be quite a bit (about 28%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5850. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		66816 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14616 (28%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		33408 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10208 (44%)

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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.