GeForce GTS 150 vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5970, which comes with GPU core speed of 725 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1600 Stream Processors, 160 TAUs, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 150		141 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 153 Watts (109%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 5970 should theoretically be a lot superior to the GeForce GTS 150 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 150		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 224000 (700%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 will be quite a bit (about 390%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTS 150. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 150		47360 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 184640 (390%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be a lot (approximately 684%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTS 150, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 150		11840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 80960 (684%)

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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes 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 of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.