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

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which comes with core speeds of 775 MHz on the GPU, and 1125 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR4 memory. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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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

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) should theoretically be quite a bit better than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB in general. (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) should be a lot (approximately 194%) faster with regards to texture filtering 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

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) is the winner, by far. (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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.