GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5870, which features clock speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1600(320x5) SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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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

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 480 will be 16% faster than the Radeon HD 5870 in general, due to 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 much (about 62%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 480. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 480 is superior to the Radeon HD 5870, and very much so. (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

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is 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 DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount 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 calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.