GeForce GTX 285 2GB vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which features a core clock speed of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1500 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1536 SPUs, 96 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

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

The Radeon HD 7870 XT, in theory, should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 285 2GB overall. (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 should be much (approximately 71%) better at anisotropic 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 using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 XT is superior to the GeForce GTX 285 2GB, and very much so. (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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. 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 rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.