Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon HD 7790

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7790, which features a clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 896 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7790		85 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 209 Watts (246%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5970 will be 167% faster than the Radeon HD 7790 in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7790		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 160000 (167%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 is a lot (approximately 314%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 7790. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7790		56000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 176000 (314%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 is quite a bit (approximately 480%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 7790, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7790		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 76800 (480%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.