GeForce GTX 460 vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 825 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory running at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 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

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB should be much faster than the GeForce GTX 460 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 28800 (33%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 will be a lot (about 43%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		37800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11400 (43%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB is quite a bit (approximately 63%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 460, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10200 (63%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result 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 anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better 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 maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. 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 fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.