GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5970, which features core clock 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 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB		350 Watts
	Difference: 56 Watts (19%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 5970 in general. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB		934298 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
	Difference: 678298 (265%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB is a lot (about 52%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 5970. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB		352800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 120800 (52%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB		141120 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 48320 (52%)

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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, the result 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 amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the 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 that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.