GeForce GTX 465 vs Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, which has GPU clock speed of 775 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM set to run at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 320(64x5) SPUs, 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

The GeForce GTX 465 should theoretically 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 (about 115%) faster with regards to 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

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 465 is a better choice, and very much so. (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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must 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, High Dynamic Range 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 of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as 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.