GeForce GTX 285 1GB vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare all of that 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 is set to run at a frequency of 1050 MHz on this particular model. It features 1120 SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		204 Watts
	Difference: 53 Watts (35%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 285 1GB should be 18% quicker than the Radeon HD 6870 overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 285 1GB		158976 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 24576 (18%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 285 1GB will be a bit (more or less 3%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

GeForce GTX 285 1GB		51840 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1440 (3%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 will be a lot (more or less 39%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 285 1GB, and should be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		20736 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8064 (39%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. 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 better 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 are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.