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GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

The GeForce GTX 470 comes with core speeds of 607 MHz on the GPU, and 837 MHz on the 1280 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 448 SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 40 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6870, which comes with a clock frequency of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1050 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1120 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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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

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6870 should theoretically be a small bit better than the GeForce GTX 470 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 should be a lot (approximately 48%) more effective at 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 will be just a bit (approximately 19%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 470, and should be capable of handling higher 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

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GeForce GTX 470

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Radeon HD 6870

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model	GeForce GTX 470	Radeon HD 6870
Manufacturer	nVidia	AMD
Year	March 2010	October 2010
Code Name	GF100	Barts XT
Memory	1280 MB	1024 MB
Core Speed	607 MHz	900 MHz
Memory Speed	3348 MHz	4200 MHz
Power (Max TDP)	215 watts	151 watts
Bandwidth	133920 MB/sec	134400 MB/sec
Texel Rate	33992 Mtexels/sec	50400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	24280 Mpixels/sec	28800 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders	448	1120
Texture Mapping Units	56	56
Render Output Units	40	32
Bus Type	GDDR5	GDDR5
Bus Width	320-bit	256-bit
Fab Process	40 nm	40 nm
Transistors	3000 million	1700 million
Bus	PCIe x16	PCIe x16
DirectX Version	DirectX 11	DirectX 11
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 4.1	OpenGL 4.1

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 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 anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics 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 card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.

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