GeForce GTX 285 2GB vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare those specifications 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 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 285 2GB		204 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 90 Watts (44%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 5970 should be a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 285 2GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		158976 MB/sec
	Difference: 97024 (61%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 will be quite a bit (about 348%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 285 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		51840 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 180160 (348%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 will be a lot (more or less 348%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 285 2GB, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		20736 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 72064 (348%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also 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, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.