GeForce GT 320 vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB should in theory be much better than the GeForce GT 320 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
GeForce GT 320		25280 MB/sec
	Difference: 118848 (470%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB is a lot (more or less 104%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GT 320. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 320		12960 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13440 (104%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 320		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22080 (511%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 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 higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

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