GeForce GTX 580 vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5850, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 725 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this specific card. It features 1440(288x5) SPUs along with 72 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 93 Watts (62%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 580 should be much faster than the Radeon HD 5850 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64384 (50%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 should be a small bit (approximately 6%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 580. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2792 (6%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 is superior to the Radeon HD 5850, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13856 (60%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. 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 quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.