GeForce GTX 285 2GB vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7870, which has a clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1200 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		204 Watts
	Difference: 29 Watts (17%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 285 2GB should perform a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 7870 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 285 2GB		158976 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 5376 (4%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 should be much (more or less 54%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 285 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		51840 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28160 (54%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 should be quite a bit (about 54%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GTX 285 2GB, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		20736 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11264 (54%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling 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 that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.