GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6970, which has a GPU core clock speed of 880 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1375 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1536 SPUs, 96 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 14 Watts (6%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6970 should theoretically perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 280 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
	Difference: 34304 (24%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be quite a bit (about 75%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36320 (75%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be quite a bit (more or less 46%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce GTX 280, and able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8896 (46%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses 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 higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.