GeForce GTX 260 vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5870, which has core clock speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1600(320x5) SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 260		182 Watts
Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 6 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5870 should perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 260 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 41712 (37%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 is a lot (more or less 84%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 260. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31136 (84%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5870 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11072 (69%)

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 moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.