GeForce GTX 285 2GB vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7970, which has a core clock frequency of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1375 MHz. It also features a 384-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 285 2GB		204 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 46 Watts (23%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7970 should in theory be much better than the GeForce GTX 285 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		158976 MB/sec
	Difference: 105024 (66%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 will be much (more or less 128%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 285 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		51840 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 66560 (128%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 will be much (approximately 43%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 285 2GB, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		20736 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8864 (43%)

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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many 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.