GeForce GTX 650 vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5970, which features GPU core speed of 725 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1600 Stream Processors, 160 TAUs, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 650		64 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 230 Watts (359%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5970 should in theory be quite a bit better than the GeForce GTX 650 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 650		80000 MB/sec
	Difference: 176000 (220%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be a lot (more or less 585%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 650. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 650		33856 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 198144 (585%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 is quite a bit (more or less 448%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce GTX 650, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 650		16928 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 75872 (448%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result 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 high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure 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 filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.