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GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

The GeForce GTX 480 comes with core speeds of 700 MHz on the GPU, and 924 MHz on the 1536 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 480 SPUs as well as 60 Texture Address Units and 48 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5870, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1200 MHz on this specific card. It features 1600(320x5) SPUs as well as 80 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5870 188 Watts
GeForce GTX 480 250 Watts
Difference: 62 Watts (33%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 480 should be 16% faster than the Radeon HD 5870 in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480 177408 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5870 153600 MB/sec
Difference: 23808 (16%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 is a lot (more or less 62%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 480. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870 68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 480 42000 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 26000 (62%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 should be much (approximately 24%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5870, and able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480 33600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5870 27200 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 6400 (24%)

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

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GeForce GTX 480

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 5870

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce GTX 480 Radeon HD 5870
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year March 2010 September 23, 2009
Code Name GF100 Cypress XT
Memory 1536 MB 1024 MB
Core Speed 700 MHz 850 MHz
Memory Speed 3696 MHz 4800 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 250 watts 188 watts
Bandwidth 177408 MB/sec 153600 MB/sec
Texel Rate 42000 Mtexels/sec 68000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 33600 Mpixels/sec 27200 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 480 1600(320x5)
Texture Mapping Units 60 80
Render Output Units 48 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 384-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 40 nm 40 nm
Transistors 3000 million 2154 million
Bus PCIe x16 PCIe 2.1 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 11 DirectX 11
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.1 OpenGL 3.2

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses 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, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

Hide Prices

GeForce GTX 480

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 5870

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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