GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 775 MHz. The GDDR4 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1125 MHz on this particular model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 TAUs 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 (G80) 640MB		143 Watts
	Difference: 37 Watts (35%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB should theoretically be a small bit faster than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		63360 MB/sec
	Difference: 8640 (14%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB will be much (approximately 99%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12224 (99%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 1GB is superior to the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		10260 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2140 (21%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling 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 video card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.