GeForce GTX 650 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6870, which features a clock speed of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1050 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1120 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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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

In theory, the Radeon HD 6870 should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 650 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 is a lot (about 49%) better at anisotropic filtering 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 (about 70%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GTX 650, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 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, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum 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 better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.