GeForce GTX 560 vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which has a clock speed of 775 MHz and a GDDR4 memory speed of 1125 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
GeForce GTX 560		150 Watts
	Difference: 44 Watts (42%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 560 should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		128128 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 56128 (78%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 should be a lot (approximately 266%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		45360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32960 (266%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 560 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		25920 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13520 (109%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 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 anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed 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 higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.