GeForce GTX 560 vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB, which has clock speeds of 825 MHz on the GPU, and 1126 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR4 memory. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB is 12% quicker than the GeForce GTX 560 overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 560		128128 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (12%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 will be much (approximately 72%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		45360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18960 (72%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB is a better choice, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 560		25920 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 480 (2%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This 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 video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.