GeForce GTX 295 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6870, which comes with GPU core speed of 900 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1050 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1120 Stream Processors, 56 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
GeForce GTX 295		289 Watts
	Difference: 138 Watts (91%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 295 should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the Radeon HD 6870 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		223776 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 89376 (67%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 295 should be much (more or less 83%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		92160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41760 (83%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 295 is a little bit (about 12%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6870, and also capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		32256 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3456 (12%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to the 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 clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.