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

Intro

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) makes use of a 65 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 650 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a speed of 970 MHz on this specific model. It features 128 SPUs along with 64 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which has a clock frequency of 775 MHz and a GDDR4 memory frequency of 1125 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Price Comparison

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords, and might not be the exact same card listed on this page. We have no control over the accuracy of their search results.

GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Radeon HD 3870 1GB Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Specifications

Model	GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)	Radeon HD 3870 1GB
Manufacturer	nVidia	ATi
Year	Dec 2007	Nov 19, 2007
Code Name	G92	RV670 XT
Fab Process	65 nm	55 nm
Bus	PCIe x16 2.0	PCIe 2.0 x16/AGP 8x
Memory	512 MB	1024 MB
Core Speed	650 MHz	775 MHz
Shader Speed	1625 MHz	(N/A) MHz
Memory Speed	970 MHz	1125 MHz
Unified Shaders	128	320(64x5)
Texture Mapping Units	64	16
Render Output Units	16	16
Bus Type	GDDR3	GDDR4
Bus Width	256-bit	256-bit
DirectX Version	DirectX 10	DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.0	OpenGL 3.0
Power (Max TDP)	135 watts	106 watts
Shader Model	4.0	4.1
Bandwidth	62080 MB/sec	72000 MB/sec
Texel Rate	41600 Mtexels/sec	12400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	10400 Mpixels/sec	12400 Mpixels/sec

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better 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 are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.