GeForce GTX 650 Ti vs Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs 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 RAM runs at a speed of 900 MHz on this particular card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 TAUs 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 650 Ti		110 Watts
	Difference: 4 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 650 Ti should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650 Ti		86400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 28800 (50%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 650 Ti should be quite a bit (more or less 379%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650 Ti		59392 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 46992 (379%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 650 Ti is superior to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, but not by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650 Ti		14848 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2448 (20%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. 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 also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.