GeForce GTX 295 vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5970, which comes with GPU clock speed of 725 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 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 295		289 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (2%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5970 should perform a small bit faster than the GeForce GTX 295 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 is quite a bit (about 152%) better at AF 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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.