GeForce GTX 285 2GB vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 825 MHz. The GDDR4 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1126 MHz on this model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 285 2GB is 10% quicker than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 285 2GB		158976 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
	Difference: 14848 (10%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 285 2GB will be much (more or less 96%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 285 2GB		51840 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 25440 (96%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB is quite a bit (approximately 27%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce GTX 285 2GB, and able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		20736 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5664 (27%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 applied per second.

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