Geforce GTX 670 vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5970, which features a GPU core clock speed of 725 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1600 Stream Processors, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Geforce GTX 670		170 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 124 Watts (73%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5970 should be 33% quicker than the Geforce GTX 670 overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
Geforce GTX 670		192000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (33%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 will be much (approximately 126%) better at AF than the Geforce GTX 670. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
Geforce GTX 670		102480 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 129520 (126%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5970 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
Geforce GTX 670		29280 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 63520 (217%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.