GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5970, which features core clock speeds of 725 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1600 SPUs along with 160 Texture Address Units and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB		350 Watts
	Difference: 56 Watts (19%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB, in theory, should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 5970 in general. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB		934298 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
	Difference: 678298 (265%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB should be much (more or less 52%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5970. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB		352800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 120800 (52%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB should be much (about 52%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5970, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB		141120 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 48320 (52%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.