GeForce GTX 295 vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5970, which comes with core clock speeds of 725 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1600 SPUs along with 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 295		289 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (2%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5970 will be 14% faster than the GeForce GTX 295 in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 295		223776 MB/sec
	Difference: 32224 (14%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be a lot (approximately 152%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 295. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 295		92160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 139840 (152%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5970 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 295		32256 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 60544 (188%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high 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 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a 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 - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.