GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7870, which has GPU core speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1280 Stream Processors, 80 TAUs, 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 260 Core 216		202 Watts
	Difference: 27 Watts (15%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7870 should in theory be quite a bit better than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 41712 (37%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 will be a lot (about 93%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		41472 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 38528 (93%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 is a lot (about 98%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216, and should be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15872 (98%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated 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 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.