GeForce GTX 590 vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5870, which has clock speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1600(320x5) SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
GeForce GTX 590		365 Watts
	Difference: 177 Watts (94%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 590, in theory, should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 5870 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		328320 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 174720 (114%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 590 should be a small bit (approximately 14%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5870. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		77696 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9696 (14%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 590 is quite a bit (about 114%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5870, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 31072 (114%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number 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 filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.