GeForce GTX 650 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6870, which comes with a core clock speed of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1050 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1120 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon HD 6870		2870 points
GeForce GTX 650		2263 points
	Difference: 607 (27%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 650		64 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 87 Watts (136%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6870 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce GTX 650 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 650		80000 MB/sec
	Difference: 54400 (68%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 will be quite a bit (about 49%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 650. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 650		33856 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16544 (49%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 is quite a bit (approximately 70%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 650, and capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 650		16928 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11872 (70%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated 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 filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.