GeForce GTX 1060 vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB, which comes with a clock speed of 825 MHz and a GDDR4 memory speed of 1126 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It 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

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 1060 will be 36% quicker than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060		196608 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
	Difference: 52480 (36%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1060 is much (approximately 356%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060		120480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 94080 (356%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1060 should be much (about 174%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060		72288 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 45888 (174%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.