GeForce GTX Titan X vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5970, which comes with a core clock frequency of 725 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 1600 SPUs, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX Titan X		250 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 44 Watts (18%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX Titan X should be 31% quicker than the Radeon HD 5970 overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX Titan X		336000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
	Difference: 80000 (31%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 is much (more or less 21%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX Titan X. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX Titan X		192000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40000 (21%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX Titan X is a better choice, but only just. (explain)

GeForce GTX Titan X		96000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (3%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.