Streams and Memory or Raw Speed?

[john10001]

When choosing a graphics card what would you say is more important?

The number of streams & amount of memory or the raw speed of the core & shader clock?

For example between the following two cards mid-priced cards which one would you choose and why:

EVGA GeForce GTX 560Ti 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
Core: 822MHz, Memory: 1024MB 4000MHz GDDR5, Stream Processors: 384, Shader Clock: 1644MHz, SLI Ready, PhysX/CUDA Enabled

ZOTAC GeForce GTX 470 1280MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
Core: 607MHz, Memory: 1280MB 3348MHz GDDR5, Stream Processors: 448, Shader Clock: 1215MHz, SLI Ready, PhysX/CUDA Enabled

Cheers,
John

 

[Rroff]

You need to take shader clock and stream processors into account when comparing stream processors.

448 * 1215 = 544320
384 * 1644 = 631296

So even tho the 470 has more SPs the 560ti has better shader throughput (until you start overclocking both but thats another story).

More VRAM is better but it depends on your resolution, settings and the games you play as to if its worth it.