GeForce GTX 285 2GB vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6970, which comes with a clock frequency of 880 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1375 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1536 SPUs, 96 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 285 2GB		204 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 46 Watts (23%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6970 should theoretically perform just a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 285 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		158976 MB/sec
	Difference: 17024 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is much (approximately 63%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 285 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		51840 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32640 (63%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be quite a bit (more or less 36%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 285 2GB, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock 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 rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.