GeForce GTS 150 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6870, which has a clock speed of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1050 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1120 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 150		141 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (7%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6870 should be 320% faster than the GeForce GTS 150 in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 150		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 102400 (320%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 will be a small bit (more or less 6%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTS 150. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 150		47360 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3040 (6%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 should be quite a bit (about 143%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTS 150, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 150		11840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16960 (143%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.