GeForce GTX 275 vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5870, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1200 MHz on this model. It features 1600(320x5) SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
GeForce GTX 275		219 Watts
	Difference: 31 Watts (16%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 5870 should in theory perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 275 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 275		127008 MB/sec
	Difference: 26592 (21%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 will be a lot (approximately 34%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 275. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 275		50640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17360 (34%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5870 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 275		17724 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9476 (53%)

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.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

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