GeForce GTX 460 1GB vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

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

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		160 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 134 Watts (84%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 5970 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 140800 (122%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 is a lot (more or less 514%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 194200 (514%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be quite a bit (approximately 330%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 71200 (330%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes 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 of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.