In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 Galaxy Edition are significantly better than the AMD Radeon HD 5870 2048MB.

The GTX 680 has a 260 MHz higher core clock speed and 48 more Texture Mapping Units than the HD 5870. This results in the GTX 680 providing 74.1 GTexel/s better texturing performance. This still holds weight but shader performance is generally more relevant, particularly since both of these GPUs support at least DirectX 10.

The GTX 680 has a 260 MHz higher core clock speed than the HD 5870 and the same number of Render Output Units. This results in the GTX 680 providing 8.3 GPixel/s better pixeling performance. However, both GPUs support DirectX 9 or above, and pixeling performance is only really relevant when comparing older cards.

The GTX 680 was released over a year more recently than the HD 5870, and so the GTX 680 is likely to have better driver support, meaning it will be more optimized for running the latest games when compared to the HD 5870.

The GTX 680 has 2048 MB more video memory than the HD 5870, so is likely to be much better at displaying game textures at higher resolutions. This is supported by the fact that the GTX 680 also has superior memory performance overall.

The GTX 680 has 38.7 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the HD 5870, which means that the memory performance of the GTX 680 is noticeably better than the HD 5870.

The GeForce GTX 680 Galaxy Edition has 1536 Shader Processing Units and the Radeon HD 5870 2048MB has 1600. However, the actual shader performance of the GTX 680 is 1806 and the actual shader performance of the HD 5870 is 680. The GTX 680 having 1126 better shader performance and an altogether better performance when taking into account other relevant data means that the GTX 680 delivers a massively smoother and more efficient experience when processing graphical data than the HD 5870.

The GTX 680 transistor size technology is 12 nm (nanometers) smaller than the HD 5870. This means that the GTX 680 is expected to run slightly cooler and achieve higher clock frequencies than the HD 5870.

The GeForce GTX 680 Galaxy Edition requires 195 Watts to run and the Radeon HD 5870 2048MB requires 195 Watts. We would recommend a PSU with at least 550 Watts for the GTX 680 and a PSU with at least 500 Watts for the HD 5870. The two GPUs require the same amount of wattage to run. As such, there is no need to worry about which will more significantly affect your yearly electricity bills.