GeForce GTX 460 vs Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, which comes with GPU core speed of 775 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 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
GeForce GTX 460		150 Watts
	Difference: 44 Watts (42%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 460 is 50% quicker than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 28800 (50%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 will be a lot (approximately 205%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		37800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 25400 (205%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 should be a lot (about 31%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3800 (31%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type 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 better 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 can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. 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 - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.