GeForce GTX 570 vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5970, which features a core clock frequency of 725 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1600 SPUs, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 570		219 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (34%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5970 should be 68% quicker than the GeForce GTX 570 in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 570		152000 MB/sec
	Difference: 104000 (68%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be quite a bit (more or less 428%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 570. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 570		43920 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 188080 (428%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be much (more or less 217%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 570, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 570		29280 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 63520 (217%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past 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, the result 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 AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.