GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs 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 as well as 16 Texture Address Units 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 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 144 Watts (136%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 480 should be much faster than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 119808 (208%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 will be much (approximately 239%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29600 (239%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 will be quite a bit (about 171%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21200 (171%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, 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 maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip 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 memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.