GeForce GTX 275 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

The GeForce GTX 275 comes with a GPU core clock speed of 633 MHz, and the 896 MB of GDDR3 RAM runs at 1134 MHz through a 448-bit bus. It also features 240 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 28 Raster Operation Units.

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6870, which comes with core speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1050 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1120 SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Price Comparison

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords, and might not be the exact same card listed on this page. We have no control over the accuracy of their search results.

GeForce GTX 275 Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Radeon HD 6870 Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Specifications

Model	GeForce GTX 275	Radeon HD 6870
Manufacturer	nVidia	ATi
Year	April 9, 2009	October 2010
Code Name	G200b	Barts XT
Fab Process	55 nm	40 nm
Bus	PCIe x16 2.0	PCIe x16
Memory	896 MB	1024 MB
Core Speed	633 MHz	900 MHz
Shader Speed	1404 MHz	(N/A) MHz
Memory Speed	1134 MHz	1050 MHz
Unified Shaders	240	1120
Texture Mapping Units	80	56
Render Output Units	28	32
Bus Type	GDDR3	GDDR5
Bus Width	448-bit	256-bit
DirectX Version	DirectX 10	DirectX 11
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.1	OpenGL 4.1
Power (Max TDP)	219 watts	151 watts
Shader Model	4.0	5.0
Bandwidth	127008 MB/sec	134400 MB/sec
Texel Rate	50640 Mtexels/sec	50400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	17724 Mpixels/sec	28800 Mpixels/sec

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.