GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB, which has a clock speed of 825 MHz and a GDDR4 memory speed of 1126 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It features 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, 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 32% quicker than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		108800 MB/sec
	Difference: 35328 (32%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) should be quite a bit (more or less 38%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		36400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10000 (38%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.