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Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon R9 285

Intro

The Radeon HD 5970 features a clock frequency of 725 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 1600 SPUs, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Compare that to the Radeon R9 285, which comes with a core clock frequency of 918 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1375 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1792 SPUs, 112 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 285 190 Watts
Radeon HD 5970 294 Watts
Difference: 104 Watts (55%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 5970, in theory, should be much faster than the Radeon R9 285 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970 256000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 285 176000 MB/sec
Difference: 80000 (45%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 is quite a bit (more or less 126%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 285. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970 232000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 285 102816 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 129184 (126%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 will be quite a bit (about 216%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 285, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970 92800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 285 29376 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 63424 (216%)

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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Radeon HD 5970

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon R9 285

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 Radeon HD 5970 Radeon R9 285
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year November 2009 September 2014
Code Name Hemlock XT Tonga PRO
Memory 1024 MB (x2) 2048 MB
Core Speed 725 MHz (x2) 918 MHz
Memory Speed 4000 MHz (x2) 5500 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 294 watts 190 watts
Bandwidth 256000 MB/sec 176000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 232000 Mtexels/sec 102816 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 92800 Mpixels/sec 29376 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 1600 (x2) 1792
Texture Mapping Units 160 (x2) 112
Render Output Units 64 (x2) 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit (x2) 256-bit
Fab Process 40 nm 28 nm
Transistors 2154 million 5000 million
Bus PCIe x16 PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 11 DirectX 12.0
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.1 OpenGL 4.4

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

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

Display Prices

Hide Prices

Radeon HD 5970

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon R9 285

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.

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