GeForce GTX 285 1GB vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5870, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1200 MHz on this model. It features 1600(320x5) SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		204 Watts
	Difference: 16 Watts (9%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 285 1GB should in theory be a small bit better than the Radeon HD 5870 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 285 1GB		158976 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 5376 (4%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 should be a lot (more or less 31%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 285 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		51840 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16160 (31%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 is a lot (about 31%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTX 285 1GB, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		20736 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6464 (31%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the 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 maximum amount of pixels that 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 amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill 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.