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GeForce GTX 660 Ti vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB

Intro

The GeForce GTX 660 Ti uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 915 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1500 MHz on this card. It features 1344 SPUs along with 112 TAUs and 24 ROPs.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB, which features core speeds of 825 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 660 Ti, in theory, should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti 144000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB 115200 MB/sec
Difference: 28800 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 Ti will be much (about 288%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti 102480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB 26400 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 76080 (288%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB should be a little bit (about 20%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 660 Ti, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB 26400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 660 Ti 21960 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 4440 (20%)

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

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GeForce GTX 660 Ti

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce GTX 660 Ti Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year August 2012 Jan 28, 2008
Code Name GK104 R680
Memory 2048 MB 512 MB (x2)
Core Speed 915 MHz 825 MHz (x2)
Memory Speed 6000 MHz 1800 MHz (x2)
Power (Max TDP) 150 watts (Unknown) watts
Bandwidth 144000 MB/sec 115200 MB/sec
Texel Rate 102480 Mtexels/sec 26400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 21960 Mpixels/sec 26400 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 1344 320(64x5) (x2)
Texture Mapping Units 112 16 (x2)
Render Output Units 24 16 (x2)
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR3
Bus Width 192-bit 256-bit (x2)
Fab Process 28 nm 55 nm
Transistors 3540 million (Unknown) million
Bus PCIe 3.0 x16 PCIe 2.0 x16/(internal PCIe 1.1 x16)
DirectX Version DirectX 11.0 DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.3 OpenGL 3.0

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 the video card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many 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.

Display Prices

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GeForce GTX 660 Ti

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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