Radeon HD 5570 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7970, which features a clock frequency of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1375 MHz. It also makes use of a 384-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 2048 SPUs, 128 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 5570		43 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 207 Watts (481%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7970 should in theory perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 5570 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5570		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 235200 (817%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 is quite a bit (about 811%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5570. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5570		13000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 105400 (811%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7970 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5570		5200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24400 (469%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.