GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6870, which features a GPU core clock speed of 900 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1050 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1120 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

GeForce GTX 470		2937 points
Radeon HD 6870		2870 points
	Difference: 67 (2%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 64 Watts (42%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6870 should theoretically be a little bit faster than the GeForce GTX 470 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
	Difference: 480 (0%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 should be much (approximately 48%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 470. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16408 (48%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6870 is a better choice, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4520 (19%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. 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 rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.