GeForce GTX 295 vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5970, which comes with a core clock speed of 725 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 1600 SPUs, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 5970 should theoretically be a little bit superior to 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 should be a lot (approximately 152%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 295. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 is much (approximately 188%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce GTX 295, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (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 largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.