GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6870, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1050 MHz on this model. It features 1120 SPUs as well as 56 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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 480		3650 points
Radeon HD 6870		2870 points
	Difference: 780 (27%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 99 Watts (66%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 480 should theoretically be much superior to the Radeon HD 6870 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 43008 (32%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 is a little bit (more or less 20%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 480. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8400 (20%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 will be a small bit (approximately 17%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 6870, and capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (17%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on 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 bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.