GeForce GTX 590 vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5870, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1200 MHz on this particular card. It features 1600(320x5) SPUs as well as 80 TAUs 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 590		365 Watts
	Difference: 177 Watts (94%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 590 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 will be a small bit (about 14%) faster with regards to anisotropic 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 should be quite a bit (about 114%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5870, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.