GeForce GTX 560 vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5870, which features a clock speed of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1200 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1600(320x5) SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 560		150 Watts
Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 38 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 5870 should theoretically be a little bit faster than the GeForce GTX 560 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 560		128128 MB/sec
	Difference: 25472 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 should be quite a bit (about 50%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 560. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 560		45360 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22640 (50%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 is a small bit (about 5%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 560, and able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 560		25920 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1280 (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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output 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 reach the max fill rate.