GeForce GTX 580 vs Radeon HD 3690/3830

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3690/3830, which has a GPU core clock speed of 668 MHz, and 256 MB of GDDR3 RAM running at 828 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 169 Watts (225%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 580, in theory, should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3690/3830 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		26496 MB/sec
	Difference: 165888 (626%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 should be quite a bit (about 362%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3690/3830. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 38720 (362%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 is a lot (about 247%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3690/3830, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 26368 (247%)

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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated 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 video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels 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 amount of 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 quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.