GeForce GTX 285 1GB vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7870, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1200 MHz on this model. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		204 Watts
	Difference: 29 Watts (17%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 285 1GB should perform a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 7870 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 285 1GB		158976 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 5376 (4%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 is a lot (about 54%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 285 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		51840 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28160 (54%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 is a lot (more or less 54%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 285 1GB, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		20736 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11264 (54%)

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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.