GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which features core speeds of 925 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		171 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 14 Watts (8%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7870 XT should in theory be much better than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 80112 (72%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT will be a lot (more or less 114%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		41472 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 47328 (114%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT will be quite a bit (more or less 84%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock 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 memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, 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 number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.