GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 154 Watts (110%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5970 should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 660 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
	Difference: 111808 (78%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 will be a lot (approximately 196%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 660. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 153600 (196%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be much (approximately 295%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTX 660, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 69280 (295%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card 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 processed per second.

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