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GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

The GeForce GTX 980 features a clock frequency of 1126 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1750 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5970, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 725 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1000 MHz on this particular model. It features 1600 SPUs along with 160 TAUs and 64 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980 165 Watts
Radeon HD 5970 294 Watts
Difference: 129 Watts (78%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 5970 should perform a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 980 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970 256000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 980 224000 MB/sec
Difference: 32000 (14%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 will be much (approximately 61%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 980. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970 232000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 980 144128 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 87872 (61%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5970 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970 92800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 980 72064 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 20736 (29%)

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

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GeForce GTX 980

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 5970

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce GTX 980 Radeon HD 5970
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year September 2014 November 2009
Code Name GM204-400 Hemlock XT
Memory 4096 MB 1024 MB (x2)
Core Speed 1126 MHz 725 MHz (x2)
Memory Speed 7000 MHz 4000 MHz (x2)
Power (Max TDP) 165 watts 294 watts
Bandwidth 224000 MB/sec 256000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 144128 Mtexels/sec 232000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 72064 Mpixels/sec 92800 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 2048 1600 (x2)
Texture Mapping Units 128 160 (x2)
Render Output Units 64 64 (x2)
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit (x2)
Fab Process 28 nm 40 nm
Transistors 5200 million 2154 million
Bus PCIe 3.0 x16 PCIe x16
DirectX Version DirectX 11.2 DirectX 11
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.5 OpenGL 4.1

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video 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 number of colour ROPs by the clock 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 fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.

Display Prices

Hide Prices

GeForce GTX 980

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 5970

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Comments

2 Responses to “GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon HD 5970”
jake says:

Oh my. Get rekt green team

SR says:

Ati hd 5970 always be king...the world fastest gfx card

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