GeForce GTX 650 Ti vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which has a core clock speed of 775 MHz and a GDDR4 memory speed of 1125 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It features 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
GeForce GTX 650 Ti		110 Watts
	Difference: 4 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 650 Ti should perform a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650 Ti		86400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 14400 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 650 Ti is a lot (about 379%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650 Ti		59392 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 46992 (379%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 650 Ti is superior to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650 Ti		14848 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of 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 processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core 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 rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.