GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which has a clock speed of 775 MHz and a GDDR4 memory speed of 1125 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		150 Watts
	Difference: 44 Watts (42%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 460 (OEM), in theory, should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		108800 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 36800 (51%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) will be much (about 194%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		36400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24000 (194%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) is quite a bit (about 68%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		20800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8400 (68%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock 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 output 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.