GeForce GTS 150 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which comes with core speeds of 925 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 150		141 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 44 Watts (31%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7870 XT should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTS 150 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 150		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 160000 (500%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT should be much (approximately 88%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTS 150. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 150		47360 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41440 (88%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 XT is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 150		11840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17760 (150%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 are applied per 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 card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.