GeForce GTX 275 vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5850, which features core speeds of 725 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1440(288x5) SPUs as well as 72 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
GeForce GTX 275		219 Watts
	Difference: 68 Watts (45%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5850 will be 1% quicker than the GeForce GTX 275 in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 275		127008 MB/sec
	Difference: 992 (1%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 will be just a bit (more or less 3%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 275. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 275		50640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1560 (3%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 is quite a bit (approximately 31%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 275, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 275		17724 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5476 (31%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.