GeForce GTX 285 2GB vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5850, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 725 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1440(288x5) SPUs, 72 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		204 Watts
	Difference: 53 Watts (35%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 285 2GB should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 5850 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 285 2GB		158976 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 30976 (24%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 should be a bit (about 1%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 285 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		51840 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 360 (1%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 is just a bit (approximately 12%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 285 2GB, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		20736 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2464 (12%)

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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the 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 processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can 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 clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.