GeForce GTX 660 Ti vs Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 775 MHz. The GDDR3 memory is set to run at a frequency of 900 MHz on this particular model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
GeForce GTX 660 Ti		150 Watts
	Difference: 44 Watts (42%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 660 Ti should theoretically be much better than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		144000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 86400 (150%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 Ti is a lot (approximately 726%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		102480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 90080 (726%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 660 Ti is superior to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		21960 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9560 (77%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.