GeForce GTX 285 1GB vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6970, which has a core clock speed of 880 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1375 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1536 SPUs, 96 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 285 1GB		204 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 46 Watts (23%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6970 is 11% faster than the GeForce GTX 285 1GB in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		158976 MB/sec
	Difference: 17024 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is quite a bit (approximately 63%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 285 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		51840 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32640 (63%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be a lot (approximately 36%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 285 1GB, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		20736 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7424 (36%)

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 MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to the 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 drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.