GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6870, which has GPU clock speed of 900 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1050 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1120 Stream Processors, 56 Texture Address Units, 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 480		3650 points
Radeon HD 6870		2870 points
	Difference: 780 (27%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 99 Watts (66%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 480 should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 6870 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 43008 (32%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 will be a small bit (about 20%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 480. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8400 (20%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 480 is the winner, though only just barely. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (17%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total 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 maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.