GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5850, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 725 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1000 MHz on this particular model. It features 1440(288x5) SPUs along with 72 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 64 Watts (42%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 470 is 5% quicker than the Radeon HD 5850 overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 5920 (5%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 should be a lot (about 54%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 470. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18208 (54%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 is a bit (more or less 5%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 5850, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1080 (5%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.