GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5970, which features GPU clock speed of 725 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1600 SPUs, 160 TAUs, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 58 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5970 should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce GTX 280 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
	Difference: 114304 (81%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 will be a lot (approximately 382%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 183840 (382%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5970 is superior to the GeForce GTX 280, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 73536 (382%)

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 transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.