GeForce GTX 260 vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5970, which comes with a clock speed of 725 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1600 SPUs, 160 TAUs, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 260		182 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 112 Watts (62%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 5970, in theory, should be a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 260 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be much (approximately 529%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 260. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 195136 (529%)

Pixel Rate

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

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, 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 that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.