GeForce GTX 650 vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5970, which has GPU clock speed of 725 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1600 Stream Processors, 160 TAUs, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 650		64 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 230 Watts (359%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5970 should theoretically be a lot better than the GeForce GTX 650 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 650		80000 MB/sec
	Difference: 176000 (220%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 is a lot (about 585%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 650. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 650		33856 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 198144 (585%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be a lot (about 448%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 650, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 650		16928 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 75872 (448%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

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