GeForce GTX 960 vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5870, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1200 MHz on this model. 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 960		120 Watts
Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 68 Watts (57%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 5870 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 960 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 41600 (37%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 should be a small bit (more or less 6%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 5870. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4128 (6%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 will be a lot (about 33%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5870, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8864 (33%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at 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 that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill 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 maximum fill rate.