GeForce GTX 560 Ti vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5850, which has core 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 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
GeForce GTX 560 Ti		170 Watts
	Difference: 19 Watts (13%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 560 Ti, in theory, should perform a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 5850 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560 Ti		128256 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 256 (0%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 Ti will be a little bit (about 1%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5850. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560 Ti		52608 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 408 (1%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 Ti should be a small bit (approximately 13%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5850, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560 Ti		26304 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3104 (13%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core 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 fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.