GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 825 MHz. The GDDR4 RAM works at a frequency of 1126 MHz on this particular model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB should perform much faster than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		63360 MB/sec
	Difference: 80768 (127%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB will be a little bit (approximately 7%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1776 (7%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB is superior to the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		10260 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16140 (157%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). 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 reach the max fill rate.