GeForce GTX 560 Ti vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB

Intro

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

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 560 Ti should theoretically be just a bit superior to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560 Ti		128256 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 13056 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 Ti should be much (approximately 99%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560 Ti		52608 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 26208 (99%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB is the winner, though not by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 560 Ti		26304 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 96 (0%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.