GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, which features a clock speed of 775 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of 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 550 Ti		116 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (9%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 550 Ti should theoretically be a lot better than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 40896 (71%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti will be much (about 132%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16400 (132%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 550 Ti is superior to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9200 (74%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs 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 output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.