GeForce GTX 260 vs Radeon HD 5770

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5770, which comes with GPU clock speed of 850 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1200 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5770		108 Watts
GeForce GTX 260		182 Watts
	Difference: 74 Watts (69%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 260 should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 5770 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		111888 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5770		76800 MB/sec
	Difference: 35088 (46%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 is a little bit (more or less 8%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 5770. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5770		34000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2864 (8%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 260 is superior to the Radeon HD 5770, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		16128 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5770		13600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2528 (19%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of 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 lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.