GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs 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 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 51 Watts (28%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7870 XT should in theory be a lot better than the GeForce GTX 280 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
	Difference: 50304 (36%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT is much (more or less 84%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40640 (84%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 XT is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10336 (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 maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it 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 anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.