GeForce GTX 650 vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which comes with a core clock speed of 775 MHz and a GDDR4 memory speed of 1125 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 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)

GeForce GTX 650		64 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 42 Watts (66%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 650 should in theory be a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650		80000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 8000 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 650 is quite a bit (about 173%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650		33856 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 21456 (173%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 650 will be a lot (approximately 37%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650		16928 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed 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 graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.