GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5870, which features GPU clock speed of 850 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1600(320x5) Stream Processors, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 27 Watts (14%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5870 is 15% faster than the GeForce GTX 470 overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
	Difference: 19680 (15%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 should be quite a bit (about 100%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 470. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34008 (100%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5870 is the winner, though only just barely. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2920 (12%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied 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 higher the texel rate, the better the video 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 most pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock 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 output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.