GeForce GTX 950 vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5870, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1200 MHz on this particular model. It features 1600(320x5) SPUs as well as 80 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950		90 Watts
Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 98 Watts (109%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5870 should be 45% faster than the GeForce GTX 950 in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950		105728 MB/sec
	Difference: 47872 (45%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 is much (more or less 38%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 950. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 950		49152 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18848 (38%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 950 is the winner, though not by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		32768 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5568 (20%)

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 max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.