GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5870, which has a clock speed of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1200 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 1600(320x5) SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 43 Watts (30%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 970 should theoretically be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 5870 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 70400 (46%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 will be a lot (more or less 61%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5870. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41200 (61%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 40000 (147%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs 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 rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.