GeForce GTX 465 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which comes with core speeds of 925 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
GeForce GTX 465		200 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (8%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7870 XT should in theory be quite a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 465 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 465		102592 MB/sec
	Difference: 89408 (87%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT will be much (approximately 232%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 465. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 465		26708 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 62092 (232%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 XT is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 465		19424 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10176 (52%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the 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 processed per second. This number 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 graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.