GeForce GTX 285 2GB vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7850, which has GPU core speed of 860 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1024 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		204 Watts
	Difference: 74 Watts (57%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 285 2GB is 4% quicker than the Radeon HD 7850 in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 285 2GB		158976 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 5376 (4%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 should be a bit (about 6%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 285 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		51840 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (6%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 is much (more or less 33%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 285 2GB, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		20736 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6784 (33%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes 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, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.