GeForce GTX 275 vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5870, which features core speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1600(320x5) SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Avatar

Settings:	Ultra High Quality
AA:	8x
AF:	none
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

Radeon HD 5870		62 FPS
GeForce GTX 275		38 FPS
	Difference: 24 FPS (63%)

Battlefield Bad Company 2

Settings:	High Quality
AA:	4x
AF:	8x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

Radeon HD 5870		58 FPS
GeForce GTX 275		39 FPS
	Difference: 19 FPS (49%)

Crysis Warhead

Settings:	Gamer Setting
AA:	none
AF:	none
Resolution:	1680 x 1050
Test Machine:	Intel Core i7 920 ,Vista Ultimate x64 SP1 , 3x2GB Ram (Source)

Radeon HD 5870		68 FPS
GeForce GTX 275		45 FPS
	Difference: 23 FPS (51%)

Fallout 3

Settings:	Very High Quality
AA:	8x
AF:	16x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

Radeon HD 5870		85 FPS
GeForce GTX 275		61 FPS
	Difference: 24 FPS (39%)

Left4Dead

Settings:	Very High Quality
AA:	8x
AF:	16x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

Radeon HD 5870		119 FPS
GeForce GTX 275		74 FPS
	Difference: 45 FPS (61%)

Left4Dead 2

Settings:	Very High
AA:	8x
AF:	16x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

Radeon HD 5870		124 FPS
GeForce GTX 275		85 FPS
	Difference: 39 FPS (46%)

Mass Effect 2

Settings:	Maximum Quality
AA:	none
AF:	8x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

Radeon HD 5870		150 FPS
GeForce GTX 275		108 FPS
	Difference: 42 FPS (39%)

Supreme Commander 2

Settings:	High
AA:	8x
AF:	16x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

Radeon HD 5870		92 FPS
GeForce GTX 275		38 FPS
	Difference: 54 FPS (142%)

Tom Clancy's Endwar

Settings:	High Quality
AA:	4x
AF:	8x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

Radeon HD 5870		30 FPS
GeForce GTX 275		28 FPS
	Difference: 2 FPS (7%)

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Radeon HD 5870 wins

(Based entirely on the benchmarks listed above)

When combining all game benchmark scores on this page together, the Radeon HD 5870 wins overall, by 272 FPS. Please note that we do not have the results of every benchmark ever done for these cards, so the results may differ wildly in different games.

Radeon HD 5870		788 FPS
GeForce GTX 275		516 FPS
	Difference: 272 FPS (53%)

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
GeForce GTX 275		219 Watts
	Difference: 31 Watts (16%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 5870, in theory, should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 275 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 275		127008 MB/sec
	Difference: 26592 (21%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 is much (approximately 34%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 275. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 275		50640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17360 (34%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 is quite a bit (approximately 53%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 275, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 275		17724 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9476 (53%)

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.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.