GeForce GTX 460 SE vs Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, which has core clock speeds of 775 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 SE		150 Watts
	Difference: 44 Watts (42%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 460 SE should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 51200 (89%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 SE is quite a bit (about 152%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18800 (152%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 SE should be quite a bit (more or less 68%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8400 (68%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock 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, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.