GeForce GTX 650 vs Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 775 MHz. The GDDR3 memory is set to run at a frequency of 900 MHz on this model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 650		64 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
	Difference: 42 Watts (66%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 650 should in theory be a lot better than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650		80000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 22400 (39%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 650 is quite a bit (more or less 173%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650		33856 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 21456 (173%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 650 is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650		16928 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4528 (37%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.