Radeon HD 5570 vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5970, which has core 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)

Radeon HD 5570		43 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 251 Watts (584%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5970 should theoretically be much better than the Radeon HD 5570 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5570		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 227200 (789%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 is much (about 1685%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5570. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5570		13000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 219000 (1685%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 is a lot (about 1685%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5570, and should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5570		5200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 87600 (1685%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called 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 - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.