GeForce GTX 460 vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5970, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 725 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1000 MHz on this model. 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)

GeForce GTX 460		150 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 144 Watts (96%)

Memory Bandwidth

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

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 169600 (196%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be quite a bit (approximately 514%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 460. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be a lot (about 473%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 460, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 76600 (473%)

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 max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.