GeForce GTX 465 vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5970, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 725 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1600 SPUs, 160 TAUs, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 465		200 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 94 Watts (47%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5970 should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 465 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 465		102592 MB/sec
	Difference: 153408 (150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be much (approximately 769%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 465. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 465		26708 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 205292 (769%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be quite a bit (approximately 378%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 465, and capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 465		19424 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 73376 (378%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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 of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.