GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6970, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 880 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1375 MHz on this particular model. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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 480		3650 points
Radeon HD 6970		3470 points
	Difference: 180 (5%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 480 should in theory be a bit better than the Radeon HD 6970 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
	Difference: 1408 (1%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be much (approximately 101%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 480. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 42480 (101%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 will be just a bit (approximately 19%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 6970, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5440 (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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 in one second. This number is worked out 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 video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core 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 also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.