GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5970, which has core clock speeds of 725 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1600 SPUs as well as 160 TAUs and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		150 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 144 Watts (96%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5970 should perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		108800 MB/sec
	Difference: 147200 (135%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 is a lot (more or less 537%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM). (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		36400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 195600 (537%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5970 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		20800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 72000 (346%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.