GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5870, which features GPU clock speed of 850 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1600(320x5) SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 48 Watts (26%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5870 should be a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 280 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
	Difference: 11904 (8%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 should be quite a bit (more or less 41%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19840 (41%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5870 is superior to the GeForce GTX 280, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7936 (41%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range 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 texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.