GeForce GTX 285 1GB vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6970, which comes with a clock speed of 880 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1375 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1536 SPUs, 96 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 285 1GB		204 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 46 Watts (23%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6970 should be a little bit faster than the GeForce GTX 285 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		158976 MB/sec
	Difference: 17024 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is a lot (approximately 63%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 285 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		51840 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32640 (63%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be quite a bit (approximately 36%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 285 1GB, and capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		20736 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7424 (36%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. 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, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.