GeForce GTX 275 vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5970, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 725 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this specific card. It features 1600 SPUs as well as 160 Texture Address Units and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 275		219 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (34%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 5970 should theoretically be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 275 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 275		127008 MB/sec
	Difference: 128992 (102%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 is a lot (more or less 358%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 275. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 275		50640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 181360 (358%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be much (more or less 424%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 275, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 275		17724 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 75076 (424%)

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 max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 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, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs 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 fill 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 maximum fill rate.