GeForce GTX 590 vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5870, which comes with GPU clock speed of 850 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1600(320x5) Stream Processors, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

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

In theory, the GeForce GTX 590 will be 114% faster than the Radeon HD 5870 in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (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 bit (about 14%) more effective at 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 will be quite a bit (approximately 114%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 5870, and also able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. 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 bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.