GeForce GTX 580 vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which has GPU core speed of 775 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR4 RAM running at 1125 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 138 Watts (130%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 580 should be 167% quicker than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 120384 (167%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 is a lot (more or less 298%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 37008 (298%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 should be quite a bit (about 199%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24656 (199%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.