GeForce GTS 150 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6870, which features GPU core speed of 900 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1050 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1120 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 150		141 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (7%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6870 is 320% faster than the GeForce GTS 150 in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 150		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 102400 (320%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 should be a bit (approximately 6%) better at AF than the GeForce GTS 150. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 150		47360 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3040 (6%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 should be much (approximately 143%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTS 150, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 150		11840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16960 (143%)

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 transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video 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 the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.