GeForce 8800 GTX vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6870, which has a clock speed of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1050 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 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 8800 GTX		155 Watts
	Difference: 4 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6870 will be 56% faster 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 will be quite a bit (approximately 37%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8800 GTX. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 is much (more or less 109%) better at AA than the GeForce 8800 GTX, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.