GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 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 runs at a frequency of 1050 MHz on this specific card. It features 1120 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units 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 260 Core 216		202 Watts
	Difference: 51 Watts (34%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 6870 should perform a small bit faster than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 22512 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 is much (more or less 22%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		41472 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8928 (22%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 will be a lot (approximately 79%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12672 (79%)

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 transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

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