GeForce GTX 465 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which features a core clock speed of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1536 SPUs, 96 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
GeForce GTX 465		200 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (8%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7870 XT should theoretically be a lot superior to the GeForce GTX 465 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 465		102592 MB/sec
	Difference: 89408 (87%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT should be much (approximately 232%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 465. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 465		26708 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 62092 (232%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 XT is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 465		19424 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10176 (52%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

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