Geforce GTX 670 vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5870, which features GPU core speed of 850 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1600(320x5) Stream Processors, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Geforce GTX 670		170 Watts
Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 18 Watts (11%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Geforce GTX 670 should theoretically be much better than the Radeon HD 5870 overall. (explain)

Geforce GTX 670		192000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 38400 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 670 should be much (more or less 51%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5870. (explain)

Geforce GTX 670		102480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34480 (51%)

Pixel Rate

The Geforce GTX 670 should be a little bit (about 8%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 5870, and should be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Geforce GTX 670		29280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2080 (8%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core 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 applied per 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 calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.