Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon R9 285

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 285, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 918 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1375 MHz on this specific model. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 112 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 285		190 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 104 Watts (55%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5970 should in theory be much superior to the Radeon R9 285 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 285		176000 MB/sec
	Difference: 80000 (45%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 is a lot (about 126%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R9 285. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 285		102816 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 129184 (126%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 will be a lot (about 216%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 285, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 285		29376 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 63424 (216%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. 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 quite a few 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.