GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5850, which comes with core clock speeds of 725 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. 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 460 2GB		160 Watts
	Difference: 9 Watts (6%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5850 should perform a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 should be much (more or less 38%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14400 (38%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 is a small bit (more or less 7%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (7%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. 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 potential to get to the max fill rate.