GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, which comes with core clock speeds of 775 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 109 Watts (103%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 470 should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 76320 (133%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 should be quite a bit (more or less 174%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 21592 (174%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 will be much (more or less 96%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11880 (96%)

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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.