GeForce GTX 260 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6870, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1050 MHz on this particular model. It features 1120 SPUs as well as 56 TAUs 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		182 Watts
	Difference: 31 Watts (21%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6870 should in theory be a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 260 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 is much (about 37%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 260. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13536 (37%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6870 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output 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 max fill rate.