GeForce GTX 275 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6870, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 900 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1050 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1120 Stream Processors, 56 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation 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

The Radeon HD 6870, in theory, should perform just a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 275 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 275 should be just a bit (more or less 0%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6870 is superior to the GeForce GTX 275, and very much so. (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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must 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, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video 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 most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.