GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 775 MHz. The GDDR4 RAM runs at a speed of 1125 MHz on this particular card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		135 Watts
	Difference: 29 Watts (27%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB, in theory, should perform a little bit faster than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		62080 MB/sec
	Difference: 9920 (16%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) is much (about 235%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		41600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29200 (235%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB is a little bit (more or less 19%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G92), and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2000 (19%)

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 transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. 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 rate also depends 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.