GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6870, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1050 MHz on this specific card. It features 1120 SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 93 Watts (62%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB should theoretically be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 6870 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 57984 (43%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 will be just a bit (more or less 2%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 992 (2%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB is much (approximately 29%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 6870, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8256 (29%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.