GeForce GTX 650 Ti 2GB vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which comes with clock speeds of 775 MHz on the GPU, and 1125 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR4 RAM. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units 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 GTX 650 Ti 2GB		110 Watts
	Difference: 4 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 650 Ti 2GB, in theory, should perform just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650 Ti 2GB		86400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 14400 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 650 Ti 2GB is a lot (more or less 379%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650 Ti 2GB		59392 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 46992 (379%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 650 Ti 2GB will be a small bit (about 20%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650 Ti 2GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster 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 can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.