GeForce GTX 560 Ti vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5870, which has a GPU core clock speed of 850 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1600(320x5) SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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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

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5870 will be 20% faster than the GeForce GTX 560 Ti overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (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 a lot (about 29%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering 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 will be just a bit (about 3%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 560 Ti, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling 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 the graphics card can possibly write 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 core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel 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.