GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, which has a clock speed of 775 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 320(64x5) SPUs, 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 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 138 Watts (130%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 134784 (234%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB will be a lot (about 298%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 37008 (298%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB should be much (about 199%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core 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 rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.