GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 825 MHz. The GDDR4 memory works at a speed of 1126 MHz on this specific model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 970 should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
	Difference: 79872 (55%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 is quite a bit (more or less 314%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 82800 (314%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 40800 (155%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, 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 figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.