GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare all that 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 memory. It features 1440(288x5) SPUs as well as 72 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 5850		151 Watts
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		171 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (13%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5850 should in theory be a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 16112 (14%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 will be much (more or less 26%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		41472 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10728 (26%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 should be much (about 44%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7072 (44%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If 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, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.