GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5970, which has a clock frequency of 725 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1600 SPUs, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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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

As far as performance goes, the GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the Radeon HD 5970 overall. (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 will be quite a bit (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

The GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB will be much (more or less 52%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 5970, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must 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 anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of 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 a second.

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