GeForce GTX Titan vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB, which comes with a core clock speed of 825 MHz and a GDDR4 memory frequency of 1126 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX Titan should theoretically be quite a bit better than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX Titan		288384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
	Difference: 144256 (100%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX Titan is much (approximately 610%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX Titan		187488 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 161088 (610%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX Titan should be quite a bit (more or less 52%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX Titan		40176 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13776 (52%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 most pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number 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 fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.