Geforce GTX 670 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6870, which has a clock speed of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1050 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 1120 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
Geforce GTX 670		170 Watts
	Difference: 19 Watts (13%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Geforce GTX 670 should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 6870 in general. (explain)

Geforce GTX 670		192000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 57600 (43%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 670 should be quite a bit (approximately 103%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

Geforce GTX 670		102480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 52080 (103%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Geforce GTX 670 is superior to the Radeon HD 6870, but not by far. (explain)

Geforce GTX 670		29280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 480 (2%)

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

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many 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.