GeForce GTX 570 vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5970, which comes with a clock speed of 725 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1600 SPUs, 160 TAUs, 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

The Radeon HD 5970, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 570 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 is quite a bit (more or less 428%) faster with regards to 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

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5970 is superior to the GeForce GTX 570, by a large margin. (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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.