GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB

Intro

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) comes with core clock speeds of 650 MHz on the GPU, and 970 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 128 SPUs along with 64 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB, which comes with clock speeds of 825 MHz on the GPU, and 1126 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR4 RAM. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units 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 X2 1GB Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Specifications

Model	GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)	Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB
Manufacturer	nVidia	ATi
Year	Dec 2007	Jan 28, 2008
Code Name	G92	R680
Fab Process	65 nm	55 nm
Bus	PCIe x16 2.0	PCIe 2.0 x16/(internal PCIe 1.1 x16)
Memory	512 MB	1024 MB (x2)
Core Speed	650 MHz	825 MHz (x2)
Shader Speed	1625 MHz	(N/A) MHz (x2)
Memory Speed	970 MHz	1126 MHz (x2)
Unified Shaders	128	320(64x5) (x2)
Texture Mapping Units	64	16 (x2)
Render Output Units	16	16 (x2)
Bus Type	GDDR3	GDDR4
Bus Width	256-bit	256-bit (x2)
DirectX Version	DirectX 10	DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.0	OpenGL 3.0
Power (Max TDP)	135 watts	(N/A) watts
Shader Model	4.0	4.1
Bandwidth	62080 MB/sec	144128 MB/sec
Texel Rate	41600 Mtexels/sec	26400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	10400 Mpixels/sec	26400 Mpixels/sec

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling 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 its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.