GeForce GTX 285 1GB vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this card. It features 1536 SPUs along with 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 285 1GB		204 Watts
	Difference: 19 Watts (10%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7870 XT will be 21% quicker than the GeForce GTX 285 1GB overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		158976 MB/sec
	Difference: 33024 (21%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT will be much (about 71%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 285 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		51840 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36960 (71%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing 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 285 1GB		20736 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8864 (43%)

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 transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 can be 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 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 most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.