GeForce GTX 880M vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5850, which features a GPU core clock speed of 725 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised 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 880M		130 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 21 Watts (16%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same bandwidth, so in theory they should have identical performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 880M is a lot (more or less 134%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5850. (explain)

GeForce GTX 880M		122112 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 69912 (134%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 880M is quite a bit (more or less 32%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 5850, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 880M		30528 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7328 (32%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.