GeForce GTX 275 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7870, which has clock speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
GeForce GTX 275		219 Watts
	Difference: 44 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7870 should be 21% quicker than the GeForce GTX 275 overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 275		127008 MB/sec
	Difference: 26592 (21%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 should be a lot (about 58%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 275. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 275		50640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29360 (58%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 is superior to the GeForce GTX 275, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 275		17724 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14276 (81%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.