Geforce GTX 670 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6870, which comes with core speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1050 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1120 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator 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 a lot faster than the Radeon HD 6870 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 670 should be much (about 103%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The Geforce GTX 670 will be a little bit (approximately 2%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6870, and also capable of handling higher resolutions better. (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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. 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 output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.