GeForce GTX 950 vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5970, which features core speeds of 725 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1600 SPUs as well as 160 Texture Address Units and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950		90 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 204 Watts (227%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5970 should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 950 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950		105728 MB/sec
	Difference: 150272 (142%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be quite a bit (about 372%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 950. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 950		49152 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 182848 (372%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5970 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 950		32768 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 60032 (183%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out 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 filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.