GeForce GT 230 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6870, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1050 MHz on this particular card. It features 1120 SPUs as well as 56 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 230		65 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 86 Watts (132%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6870 should in theory be much better than the GeForce GT 230 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 230		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (250%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 is quite a bit (approximately 473%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 230. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 230		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41600 (473%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 should be a lot (approximately 555%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 230, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 230		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24400 (555%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs 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 also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.