GeForce GTS 450 vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5970, which comes with a core clock speed of 725 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1600 SPUs, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450		106 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 188 Watts (177%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5970 should be much faster than the GeForce GTS 450 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 198272 (343%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 will be quite a bit (approximately 826%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTS 450. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 206944 (826%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5970 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 80272 (641%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.