Geforce GTX 780 vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 775 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR4 memory running at 1125 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
Geforce GTX 780		250 Watts
	Difference: 144 Watts (136%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Geforce GTX 780 should in theory perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB in general. (explain)

Geforce GTX 780		288384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 216384 (301%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 780 should be a lot (more or less 1236%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

Geforce GTX 780		165696 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 153296 (1236%)

Pixel Rate

The Geforce GTX 780 is quite a bit (approximately 234%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Geforce GTX 780		41424 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated 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 drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.