GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon HD 5670

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5670, which comes with a clock frequency of 775 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 400(80x5) SPUs, 20 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5670		61 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 183 Watts (300%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB should in theory be a lot better than the Radeon HD 5670 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5670		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 128384 (201%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB should be quite a bit (about 219%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 5670. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5670		15500 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 33908 (219%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5670		6200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 30856 (498%)

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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. 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 fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.