GeForce GTX 465 vs Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 775 MHz. The GDDR3 memory is set to run at a speed of 900 MHz on this particular model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 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 465		200 Watts
	Difference: 94 Watts (89%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 465 should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 465		102592 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 44992 (78%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 465 is a lot (approximately 115%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 465		26708 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14308 (115%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 465 is much (more or less 57%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 465		19424 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7024 (57%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.