GeForce GTX 980M vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5850, which features a clock speed of 725 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 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 980M		100 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 51 Watts (51%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same memory bandwidth, so theoretically they should perform the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M should be quite a bit (more or less 91%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 5850. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 47448 (91%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M is quite a bit (about 186%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5850, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 43232 (186%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's 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 rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.