GeForce GTX 460 SE vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB, which features a core clock speed of 825 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB, in theory, should be a small bit faster than the GeForce GTX 460 SE in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (6%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 SE should be just a bit (more or less 18%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (18%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB is a lot (approximately 27%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 460 SE, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.