GeForce GTX 560 Ti vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5870, which comes with 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)

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

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 5870, in theory, should perform a small bit faster 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 (approximately 29%) better at texture 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 is a small bit (more or less 3%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 560 Ti, and also should be able to handle higher 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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported 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 it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, 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 the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of 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 fill 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 max fill rate.