GeForce GTX 570 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6870, which features a GPU core clock speed of 900 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1050 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1120 SPUs, 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 570		4387 points
Radeon HD 6870		2870 points
	Difference: 1517 (53%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
GeForce GTX 570		219 Watts
	Difference: 68 Watts (45%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 570 should in theory be just a bit better than the Radeon HD 6870 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		152000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 17600 (13%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 is a little bit (more or less 15%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 570. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 570		43920 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6480 (15%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 570 is the winner, though only just barely. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		29280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 480 (2%)

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 moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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 ability to reach the maximum fill rate.