GeForce GTS 150 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7870, which features GPU core speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1280 Stream Processors, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 150		141 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 34 Watts (24%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7870 should be much faster than the GeForce GTS 150 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 150		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 121600 (380%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 should be a lot (more or less 69%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 150. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 150		47360 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32640 (69%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 150		11840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20160 (170%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, 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 video card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.