GeForce 8800 GTX vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6870, which features GPU core speed of 900 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1050 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1120 Stream Processors, 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 8800 GTX		155 Watts
	Difference: 4 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6870 will be 56% quicker than the GeForce 8800 GTX in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 48000 (56%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 is a lot (about 37%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 GTX. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		36800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13600 (37%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6870 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		13800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15000 (109%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the 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 that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.