GeForce GTX 460 vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 825 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory set to run 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 speaking, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB will be 33% faster than the GeForce GTX 460 overall, because of its greater data rate. (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 much (about 43%) more effective at anisotropic filtering 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 (about 63%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 460, and able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.