GeForce GTX 570 vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5870, which features a core clock speed of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1200 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1600(320x5) SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
GeForce GTX 570		219 Watts
	Difference: 31 Watts (16%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5870 should be 1% quicker than the GeForce GTX 570 in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 570		152000 MB/sec
	Difference: 1600 (1%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 will be quite a bit (more or less 55%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 570. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 570		43920 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24080 (55%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 570 is a better choice, though only just barely. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		29280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2080 (8%)

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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

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