GeForce GTX 465 vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which comes with GPU clock speed of 775 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR4 RAM set to run at 1125 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

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
GeForce GTX 465		200 Watts
	Difference: 94 Watts (89%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 465 should in theory perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 465		102592 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 30592 (42%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 465 is much (approximately 115%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 465		26708 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14308 (115%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 465 is superior to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 465		19424 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.