GeForce GTX 465 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7870, which comes with a core clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1200 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
GeForce GTX 465		200 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (14%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7870 should in theory be much better than the GeForce GTX 465 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 465		102592 MB/sec
	Difference: 51008 (50%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 will be much (approximately 200%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 465. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 465		26708 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 53292 (200%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 is quite a bit (approximately 65%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 465, and also able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 465		19424 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12576 (65%)

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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.