GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5870, which comes with clock speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1600(320x5) SPUs as well as 80 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448		210 Watts
	Difference: 22 Watts (12%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5870 will be 7% faster than the GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448		144000 MB/sec
	Difference: 9600 (7%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 should be quite a bit (about 66%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448		40992 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 27008 (66%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 should be a little bit (about 8%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 5870, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448		29280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2080 (8%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.