Geforce GTX 780 vs Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, which features GPU core speed of 775 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory set to run at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
Geforce GTX 780		250 Watts
	Difference: 144 Watts (136%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Geforce GTX 780, in theory, should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB overall. (explain)

Geforce GTX 780		288384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 230784 (401%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 780 will be a lot (more or less 1236%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

Geforce GTX 780		165696 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 153296 (1236%)

Pixel Rate

The Geforce GTX 780 is much (more or less 234%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, and will be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Geforce GTX 780		41424 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 29024 (234%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated 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 video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.