GeForce GTX 580 vs Radeon HD 5570

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5570, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 650 MHz. The DDR3 RAM works at a frequency of 900 MHz on this specific card. It features 400(80x5) SPUs along with 20 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5570		43 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 201 Watts (467%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 580 should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 5570 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5570		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 163584 (568%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 will be a lot (approximately 280%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5570. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5570		13000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36408 (280%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 will be much (more or less 613%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5570, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5570		5200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 31856 (613%)

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 over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.