GeForce GTX 295 vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5850, which comes with GPU core speed of 725 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1440(288x5) SPUs, 72 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
GeForce GTX 295		289 Watts
	Difference: 138 Watts (91%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 295 should be 75% quicker than the Radeon HD 5850 in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		223776 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 95776 (75%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 295 will be quite a bit (about 77%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 5850. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		92160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 39960 (77%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 295 is superior to the Radeon HD 5850, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		32256 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9056 (39%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. 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 rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.