GeForce GTX 295 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1500 MHz on this specific model. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
GeForce GTX 295		289 Watts
	Difference: 104 Watts (56%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 295 is 17% faster than the Radeon HD 7870 XT overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		223776 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
	Difference: 31776 (17%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 295 is a little bit (about 4%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 7870 XT. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		92160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3360 (4%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 295 will be a little bit (more or less 9%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7870 XT, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		32256 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2656 (9%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better 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 a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card 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 Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.