GeForce GT 320 vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which features GPU clock speed of 775 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR4 RAM running at 1125 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 320		43 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 63 Watts (147%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3870 1GB will be 185% faster than the GeForce GT 320 in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 320		25280 MB/sec
	Difference: 46720 (185%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 320 will be a bit (about 5%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GT 320		12960 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 560 (5%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB is much (about 187%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 320, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 320		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8080 (187%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at 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 that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.