GeForce 8800 GTX vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which has GPU clock speed of 775 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR4 RAM set to run at 1125 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTX		155 Watts
	Difference: 49 Watts (46%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 8800 GTX should theoretically be a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTX		86400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 14400 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTX will be much (approximately 197%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTX		36800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24400 (197%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTX should be a little bit (more or less 11%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTX		13800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1400 (11%)

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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.