GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 775 MHz. The GDDR4 RAM runs at a speed of 1125 MHz on this card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 109 Watts (103%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 470 should in theory be quite a bit better than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 61920 (86%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 will be quite a bit (approximately 174%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 21592 (174%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 is a lot (more or less 96%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		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 largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 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 speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.