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GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon RX 5500

Intro

The GeForce GTX 970 comes with a core clock frequency of 1050 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1750 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1664 SPUs, 104 TAUs, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 5500, which makes use of a 7 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1670 MHz. The GDDR6 RAM works at a frequency of 14000 MHz on this card. It features 1408 SPUs as well as 88 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
Radeon RX 5500		150 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon RX 5500 should be 2% faster than the GeForce GTX 970 overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500		229376 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 5376 (2%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 5500 should be a lot (about 35%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 970. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500		146960 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 37760 (35%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 is quite a bit (approximately 26%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon RX 5500, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 5500		53440 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13760 (26%)

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

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GeForce GTX 970

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Radeon RX 5500

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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	GeForce GTX 970	Radeon RX 5500
Manufacturer	nVidia	AMD
Year	September 2014	October 2019
Code Name	GM204-200	Navi 14 XT
Memory	4096 MB	4096 MB
Core Speed	1050 MHz	1670 MHz
Memory Speed	7000 MHz	28000 GB/s
Power (Max TDP)	145 watts	150 watts
Bandwidth	224000 MB/sec	229376 MB/sec
Texel Rate	109200 Mtexels/sec	146960 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	67200 Mpixels/sec	53440 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders	1664	1408
Texture Mapping Units	104	88
Render Output Units	64	32
Bus Type	GDDR5	GDDR6
Bus Width	256-bit	128-bit
Fab Process	28 nm	7 nm
Transistors	5200 million	6400 million
Bus	PCIe 3.0 x16	PCIe 4.0 ×16
DirectX Version	DirectX 11.2	DirectX 12
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 4.5	OpenGL 4.6

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.

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