Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 290X, which has clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2816 SPUs along with 176 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 6 Watts (2%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 290X should in theory be much better than the Radeon HD 5970 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 is much (approximately 65%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 290X. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 91200 (65%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 will be a lot (about 81%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 290X, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 41600 (81%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, 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 number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.