GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6870, which has a core clock frequency of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1050 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1120 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		135 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 16 Watts (12%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6870 should in theory be much faster than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		62080 MB/sec
	Difference: 72320 (116%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 will be a lot (approximately 21%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G92). (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		41600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8800 (21%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 will be a lot (more or less 177%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G92), and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18400 (177%)

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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.