GeForce GTX 275 vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5870, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1200 MHz on this particular model. 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 275		219 Watts
	Difference: 31 Watts (16%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5870 will be 21% quicker than the GeForce GTX 275 in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 275		127008 MB/sec
	Difference: 26592 (21%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 is a lot (approximately 34%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 275. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 275		50640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17360 (34%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 is a lot (approximately 53%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 275, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 275		17724 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9476 (53%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better 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 a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core 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 output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.