GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 775 MHz. The GDDR4 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1125 MHz on this specific model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 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 1GB		106 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		135 Watts
	Difference: 29 Watts (27%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 3870 1GB should be a small bit faster than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		62080 MB/sec
	Difference: 9920 (16%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) should be much (more or less 235%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		41600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29200 (235%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 1GB is a better choice, though not by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2000 (19%)

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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount 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 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 graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's 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 of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.