GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5970, which features GPU clock speed of 725 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1600 Stream Processors, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		202 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 92 Watts (46%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 5970 should in theory perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 144112 (129%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 will be a lot (about 459%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		41472 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 190528 (459%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 will be a lot (approximately 475%) better at AA than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 76672 (475%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses 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 can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant 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.