GeForce 8800 GS vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6870, which comes with a clock speed of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1050 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 1120 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GS		105 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 46 Watts (44%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6870 is 250% quicker than the GeForce 8800 GS overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (250%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 will be quite a bit (more or less 91%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8800 GS. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24000 (91%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 should be much (approximately 336%) better at AA than the GeForce 8800 GS, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22200 (336%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core 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 output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.