GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5850, which has a core clock speed of 725 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1440(288x5) SPUs, 72 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 11 Watts (8%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 660 should be 13% faster than the Radeon HD 5850 in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16192 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 will be much (approximately 50%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5850. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 26200 (50%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 660 is a better choice, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 320 (1%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied 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 higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs 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 output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.