GeForce GTX 275 vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5870, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1200 MHz on this particular card. It features 1600(320x5) SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

In theory, the Radeon HD 5870 should be 21% faster than the GeForce GTX 275 in general, due to its higher data rate. (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

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5870 is a better choice, by a large margin. (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 largest amount of data (in units of MB 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 the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen 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 higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.