GeForce GTX 275 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6870, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1050 MHz on this particular card. It features 1120 SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
GeForce GTX 275		219 Watts
	Difference: 68 Watts (45%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6870 should be 6% faster than the GeForce GTX 275 overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 275		127008 MB/sec
	Difference: 7392 (6%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 275 will be a little bit (approximately 0%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

GeForce GTX 275		50640 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 240 (0%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 should be much (about 62%) better at AA than the GeForce GTX 275, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 275		17724 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11076 (62%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. 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 fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.