GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6970, which comes with a core clock speed of 880 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1375 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 1536 SPUs, 96 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 14 Watts (6%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6970 should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 280 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
	Difference: 34304 (24%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is a lot (about 75%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36320 (75%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be a lot (approximately 46%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 280, and should be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8896 (46%)

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 max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 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.