Fill rate
Theoretical fill rate and memory bandwidth peaks don't necessarily dictate real-world performance, but they're a good place to start.

  Core clock (MHz) Pixel pipelines Peak fill rate (Mpixels/s)Texture units per pixel pipeline Peak fill rate (Mtexels/s) Memory clock (MHz) Memory bus width (bits) Peak memory bandwidth (GB/s)
Radeon 9600 Pro40041600116006001289.6
Radeon 9600 XT50042000120006001289.6
GeForce FX 5600 Ultra400416001160080012812.8
GeForce FX 5700 Ultra475419001190090612814.5

When it comes to theoretical peaks, the GeForce FX 5700 Ultra is simply a monster. The card's 475MHz core clock speed yields pixel and texel fill rates that rival the Radeon 9600 XT, but the real story is the card's memory bandwidth. With DDR2 memory chips running at an effective 906MHz, the 5700 Ultra offers a whopping 14.5GB/s of memory bandwidth—50% more bandwidth than the Radeon 9600 XT. ATI has caught some flack for the Radeon 9600 XT's relatively unimpressive memory bandwidth, but the card has thus far held its own quite nicely against the GeForce FX 5600 Ultra. Against the bandwidth-rich 5700 Ultra, the Radeon 9600 XT may not be so lucky.

Of course, theoretical peaks are sometimes worth little more than the paper they're printed on. Let's see how the FX 5700 Ultra's fill rate specs pan out in practice.

In 3DMark03's fill rate tests, the GeForce FX 5700 Ultra delivers the best single-textured fill rate performance, but is stuck behind both Radeons when it comes to multitexturing.

Shaders

When NVIDIA claimed that NV36's shader power was much improved, it wasn't kidding. In 3DMark03's pixel shader 2.0 test, the GeForce FX 5700 Ultra is 50% faster than the 5600 Ultra, but even then it can't catch the Radeon 9600 Pro. Vertex shaders are another story, though. The 5700 Ultra bursts to the front of the pack in 3DMark03's vertex shader test. Most striking is the fact that the 5700 Ultra delivers more than double the vertex shader performance of the 5600 Ultra.