Geforce GTX 780 vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 825 MHz. The GDDR4 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1126 MHz on this particular card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Geforce GTX 780 should theoretically perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB overall. (explain)

Geforce GTX 780		288384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
	Difference: 144256 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 780 should be quite a bit (about 528%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB. (explain)

Geforce GTX 780		165696 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 139296 (528%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Geforce GTX 780 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Geforce GTX 780		41424 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15024 (57%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.