GeForce GTX 750 Ti vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which has GPU clock speed of 775 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR4 RAM set to run at 1125 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 750 Ti		60 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 46 Watts (77%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 750 Ti, in theory, should perform a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 750 Ti		86400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 14400 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 750 Ti will be quite a bit (approximately 229%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 750 Ti		40800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28400 (229%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 750 Ti is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 750 Ti		16320 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3920 (32%)

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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also 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, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.