GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5970, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 725 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this specific 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 280		236 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 58 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5970 should in theory be much better than the GeForce GTX 280 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
	Difference: 114304 (81%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 will be much (approximately 382%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 183840 (382%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5970 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 73536 (382%)

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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few 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.