GeForce GTX 285 2GB vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6970, which comes with core speeds of 880 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 TAUs 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 be 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 should be quite a bit (about 63%) more effective at anisotropic filtering 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

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6970 is the winner, by a large margin. (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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one 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 higher this number, the better the video 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 most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.