GeForce GTX 560 Ti vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare 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 features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1600 SPUs, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 560 Ti		170 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 124 Watts (73%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5970 will be 100% quicker than the GeForce GTX 560 Ti in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 560 Ti		128256 MB/sec
	Difference: 127744 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be quite a bit (about 341%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 560 Ti. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 560 Ti		52608 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 179392 (341%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 is much (approximately 253%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GTX 560 Ti, and also capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 560 Ti		26304 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 66496 (253%)

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 transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must 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 AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.