Radeon HD 5770 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7970, which comes with core clock speeds of 925 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5770		108 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 142 Watts (131%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7970 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the Radeon HD 5770 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5770		76800 MB/sec
	Difference: 187200 (244%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 should be a lot (approximately 248%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5770. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5770		34000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 84400 (248%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 should be much (approximately 118%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 5770, and able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5770		13600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16000 (118%)

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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 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 anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.