GeForce GTX 560 Ti vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5870, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1200 MHz on this card. It features 1600(320x5) SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 560 Ti		170 Watts
Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 18 Watts (11%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 5870 should theoretically be a small bit better than the GeForce GTX 560 Ti overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 560 Ti		128256 MB/sec
	Difference: 25344 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 should be quite a bit (about 29%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 560 Ti. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 560 Ti		52608 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15392 (29%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 is a bit (approximately 3%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTX 560 Ti, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 560 Ti		26304 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 896 (3%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 can 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 colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). 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 get to the maximum fill rate.