GeForce 8800 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6870, which comes with GPU core speed of 900 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1050 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1120 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		105 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 46 Watts (44%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 6870 should be much faster than the GeForce 8800 GT 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 76800 (133%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 will be much (approximately 50%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 GT 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16800 (50%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6870 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19200 (200%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, 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 that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.