GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which has a clock frequency of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1536 SPUs, 96 TAUs, 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 260 Core 216		202 Watts
	Difference: 17 Watts (9%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7870 XT should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 80112 (72%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT will be a lot (approximately 114%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		41472 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 47328 (114%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 XT is superior to the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13472 (84%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.