GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6870, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1050 MHz on this specific model. It features 1120 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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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 be 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 will be quite a bit (more or less 22%) faster with regards to AF 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 quite a bit (about 79%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216, and should be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (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 MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of 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 - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.