GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5970, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 725 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1000 MHz on this particular model. It features 1600 SPUs as well as 160 Texture Address Units and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 44 Watts (18%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5970 should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce GTX 480 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
	Difference: 78592 (44%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 is much (approximately 452%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 480. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 190000 (452%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be a lot (approximately 176%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTX 480, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 59200 (176%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.