GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5850, which has core clock speeds of 725 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1440(288x5) SPUs along with 72 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 660 should theoretically be just a bit superior to the Radeon HD 5850 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 should be a lot (approximately 50%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 5850. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 is just a bit (approximately 1%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 5850, and should be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.