GeForce GTX 275 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7870, which features a clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1200 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
GeForce GTX 275		219 Watts
	Difference: 44 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 7870 should perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 275 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 275		127008 MB/sec
	Difference: 26592 (21%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 is quite a bit (more or less 58%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 275. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 275		50640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29360 (58%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 is a lot (more or less 81%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GTX 275, and should be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 275		17724 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14276 (81%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.