GeForce GTX 295 vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB, which features GPU core speed of 825 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR4 RAM running at 1126 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 295 should theoretically be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		223776 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
	Difference: 79648 (55%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 295 should be much (approximately 249%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		92160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 65760 (249%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 295 will be quite a bit (more or less 22%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		32256 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5856 (22%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If 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 higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total 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 graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.