GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7870, which features a core clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1200 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		202 Watts
	Difference: 27 Watts (15%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7870 should in theory be quite a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 41712 (37%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 will be quite a bit (more or less 93%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		41472 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 38528 (93%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 is a lot (about 98%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15872 (98%)

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 transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.