GeForce GTX 650 Ti vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 775 MHz. The GDDR4 RAM works at a frequency of 1125 MHz on this specific model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
GeForce GTX 650 Ti		110 Watts
	Difference: 4 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 650 Ti is 20% faster than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650 Ti		86400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 14400 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 650 Ti will be quite a bit (approximately 379%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650 Ti		59392 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 46992 (379%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 650 Ti is a better choice, though only just barely. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650 Ti		14848 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2448 (20%)

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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 amount 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 the texel rate, 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 can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. 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 get to the max fill rate.