GeForce GTX 650 vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5870, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1200 MHz on this specific model. It features 1600(320x5) SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 650		64 Watts
Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 124 Watts (194%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5870 is 92% faster than the GeForce GTX 650 in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 650		80000 MB/sec
	Difference: 73600 (92%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 will be quite a bit (approximately 101%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 650. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 650		33856 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34144 (101%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5870 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 650		16928 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10272 (61%)

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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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 reach the max fill rate.