GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5970, which features clock speeds of 725 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1600 SPUs as well as 160 TAUs and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 149 Watts (103%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 5970 should in theory be a small bit faster than the GeForce GTX 970 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32000 (14%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be quite a bit (approximately 112%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 970. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 122800 (112%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 will be a lot (about 38%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 970, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25600 (38%)

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 transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, 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 AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum 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 clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.