GeForce GTX 590 vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB, which comes with core clock speeds of 825 MHz on the GPU, and 1126 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR4 RAM. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 590 should theoretically perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		328320 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
	Difference: 184192 (128%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 590 will be much (more or less 194%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		77696 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 51296 (194%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 590 should be a lot (more or less 121%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 31872 (121%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred 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 memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called 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 memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.