GeForce GTX 1050 3GB vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 825 MHz. The GDDR4 RAM works at a speed of 1126 MHz on this particular card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB is 68% faster than the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		86016 MB/sec
	Difference: 58112 (68%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1050 3GB will be much (more or less 153%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		66816 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40416 (153%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		33408 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7008 (27%)

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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.