GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which comes with GPU core speed of 775 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR4 memory running at 1125 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
	Difference: 34 Watts (32%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 660, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 72192 (100%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 will be a lot (more or less 532%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 66000 (532%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 660 is superior to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11120 (90%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is worked out 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

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