GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6870, which features core clock speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1050 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. 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)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		143 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 8 Watts (6%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6870 should perform a lot faster than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		63360 MB/sec
	Difference: 71040 (112%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 will be quite a bit (about 105%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 25776 (105%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6870 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		10260 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18540 (181%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.