GeForce 8800 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5970, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 725 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1000 MHz on this specific card. It features 1600 SPUs along with 160 Texture Address Units and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		105 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 189 Watts (180%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5970 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce 8800 GT 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 198400 (344%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be quite a bit (approximately 590%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8800 GT 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 198400 (590%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5970 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 83200 (867%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once 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, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's 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 also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.