GeForce GTX 580 vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5870, which comes with a core clock speed of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1200 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 1600(320x5) SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 56 Watts (30%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 580 will be 25% quicker than the Radeon HD 5870 overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 38784 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 is a lot (approximately 38%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 580. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18592 (38%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 is much (about 36%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 5870, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9856 (36%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 processed per second. This figure is worked out 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 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 maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends 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.