Geforce GTX 680 vs Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 775 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 900 MHz on this particular card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
Geforce GTX 680		195 Watts
	Difference: 89 Watts (84%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Geforce GTX 680 should in theory perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB in general. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		192256 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 134656 (234%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 is a lot (approximately 938%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		128768 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 116368 (938%)

Pixel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 will be quite a bit (more or less 160%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		32192 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19792 (160%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant 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.