GeForce GTX 560 Ti vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 825 MHz. The GDDR4 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1126 MHz on this model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB, in theory, should perform a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 560 Ti overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 560 Ti		128256 MB/sec
	Difference: 15872 (12%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 Ti will be a lot (about 99%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560 Ti		52608 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 26208 (99%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB should be a little bit (about 0%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 560 Ti, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 560 Ti		26304 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 96 (0%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock 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 is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.