GeForce GTX 285 2GB vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

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

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

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

In theory, the Radeon HD 6970 should 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 will be a lot (approximately 63%) faster with regards to 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 high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6970 is the winner, and very much so. (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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.