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GeForce 8800 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

The GeForce 8800 GT 512MB features core speeds of 600 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 112 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 775 MHz. The GDDR4 memory works at a frequency of 1125 MHz on this specific card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GT 512MB 105 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 1GB 106 Watts
Difference: 1 Watts (1%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 3870 1GB should be a lot faster than the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB 72000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB 57600 MB/sec
Difference: 14400 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GT 512MB should be much (more or less 171%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GT 512MB 33600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB 12400 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 21200 (171%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 1GB is superior to the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB 12400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB 9600 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 2800 (29%)

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

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GeForce 8800 GT 512MB

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 3870 1GB

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 8800 GT 512MB Radeon HD 3870 1GB
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year Oct 2007 Nov 19, 2007
Code Name G92 RV670 XT
Memory 512 MB 1024 MB
Core Speed 600 MHz 775 MHz
Memory Speed 1800 MHz 2250 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 105 watts 106 watts
Bandwidth 57600 MB/sec 72000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 33600 Mtexels/sec 12400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 9600 Mpixels/sec 12400 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 112 320(64x5)
Texture Mapping Units 56 16
Render Output Units 16 16
Bus Type GDDR3 GDDR4
Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 65 nm 55 nm
Transistors 754 million (Unknown) million
Bus PCIe x16 2.0 PCIe 2.0 x16/AGP 8x
DirectX Version DirectX 10 DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 3.0

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

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

Display Prices

Hide Prices

GeForce 8800 GT 512MB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 3870 1GB

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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