GeForce GTX 285 2GB vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which has a clock speed of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 1536 SPUs, 96 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		204 Watts
	Difference: 19 Watts (10%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7870 XT will be 21% quicker than the GeForce GTX 285 2GB overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		158976 MB/sec
	Difference: 33024 (21%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT is much (more or less 71%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 285 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		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 a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video 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 number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.