GeForce GTX 295 vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5850, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 725 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this particular card. It features 1440(288x5) SPUs as well as 72 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
GeForce GTX 295		289 Watts
	Difference: 138 Watts (91%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 295 will be 75% quicker than the Radeon HD 5850 in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		223776 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 95776 (75%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 295 should be a lot (about 77%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5850. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		92160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 39960 (77%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 295 should be a lot (approximately 39%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5850, and able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		32256 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9056 (39%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 are processed per second. This number 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 graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.