GeForce GTX 285 2GB vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6870, which has GPU clock speed of 900 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1050 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1120 SPUs, 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 285 2GB		204 Watts
	Difference: 53 Watts (35%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 285 2GB should be a bit faster than the Radeon HD 6870 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 285 2GB		158976 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 24576 (18%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 285 2GB is a little bit (about 3%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

GeForce GTX 285 2GB		51840 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1440 (3%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6870 is superior to the GeForce GTX 285 2GB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		20736 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8064 (39%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.