GeForce GTX 960 vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5970, which has GPU core speed of 725 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1600 Stream Processors, 160 TAUs, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960		120 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 174 Watts (145%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 5970 should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 960 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 144000 (129%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 is a lot (about 222%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 960. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 159872 (222%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5970 is superior to the GeForce GTX 960, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 56736 (157%)

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 across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.