[peanut]

I'm not sure if this is the correct thread to post in about questions but here we go anyway..

When comparing ATI and Nvidia cards, what's the difference between the Nvidia specification "Processor Cores" next to Stream Processors and ATI's specification "Stream Processing Units." Are they in fact the same? Meaning that givin the example:

Nvidia GTX260 with 216 Processor Cores is small compared to the ATI's 4970 800 Streaming Processing Units. I just need clarification for the difference between the two ways they go about it in the specifications.

[Carbon]

You can't compare things like this across entirely different architectures.

But anyway, here's the scoop. nVidia uses stream processors that can basically do anything, the code asks for them and the card gives whatever many it needs. ATI, on the other hand, uses blocks of five stream processors that are more efficient: some can only do certain tasks, but this makes them more efficient sometimes depending on the kind of task being run.

So nVidia can do a lot more with less SPs as their SPs can do everything.