Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon HD 7770

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7770, which has a clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1125 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 640 SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7770		80 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 214 Watts (268%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 5970 should in theory perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 7770 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7770		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 184000 (256%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 is much (approximately 480%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 7770. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7770		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 192000 (480%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 will be a lot (more or less 480%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7770, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7770		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 76800 (480%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

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