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GeForce GTS 150 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

The GeForce GTS 150 comes with a core clock frequency of 740 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 500 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 128 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6870, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1050 MHz on this specific model. It features 1120 SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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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

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6870 should in theory be quite a bit better than the GeForce GTS 150 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 will be a small bit (more or less 6%) more effective at anisotropic filtering 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 will be a lot (more or less 143%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GTS 150, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (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

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GeForce GTS 150

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 6870

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce GTS 150 Radeon HD 6870
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year March 10, 2009 October 2010
Code Name G92b Barts XT
Memory 1024 MB 1024 MB
Core Speed 740 MHz 900 MHz
Memory Speed 1000 MHz 4200 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 141 watts 151 watts
Bandwidth 32000 MB/sec 134400 MB/sec
Texel Rate 47360 Mtexels/sec 50400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 11840 Mpixels/sec 28800 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 128 1120
Texture Mapping Units 64 56
Render Output Units 16 32
Bus Type GDDR3 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 55 nm 40 nm
Transistors 754 million 1700 million
Bus PCIe x16 2.0 PCIe x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10 DirectX 11
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 4.1

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it must 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, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce GTS 150

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 6870

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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