GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6870, which features clock speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1050 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1120 SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

GeForce GTX 470		2937 points
Radeon HD 6870		2870 points
	Difference: 67 (2%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 64 Watts (42%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6870 should in theory be just a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 470 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
	Difference: 480 (0%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 is much (about 48%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 470. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16408 (48%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 should be a small bit (approximately 19%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 470, and able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4520 (19%)

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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends 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.