Geforce GTX 680 vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5970, which comes with a core clock speed of 725 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1600 SPUs, 160 TAUs, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Geforce GTX 680		195 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 99 Watts (51%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5970 should perform quite a bit faster than the Geforce GTX 680 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
Geforce GTX 680		192256 MB/sec
	Difference: 63744 (33%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be much (approximately 80%) more effective at AF than the Geforce GTX 680. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
Geforce GTX 680		128768 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 103232 (80%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be much (approximately 188%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Geforce GTX 680, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
Geforce GTX 680		32192 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 60608 (188%)

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 max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied 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 better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units 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 fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.