GeForce GTX 285 1GB vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7870, which features GPU clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1280 Stream Processors, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		204 Watts
	Difference: 29 Watts (17%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 285 1GB will be 4% quicker than the Radeon HD 7870 in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 285 1GB		158976 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 5376 (4%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 is a lot (about 54%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 285 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		51840 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28160 (54%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 will be much (approximately 54%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 285 1GB, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		20736 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11264 (54%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's 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 is also dependant on many 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.