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

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 775 MHz. The GDDR4 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1125 MHz on this card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

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

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) should theoretically be quite a bit better 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) should be quite a bit (approximately 194%) faster with regards to 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

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) is superior to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, and very much so. (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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses 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 higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better 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 most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. 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, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.