GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB vs Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, which comes with GPU core speed of 775 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory set to run at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		143 Watts
	Difference: 37 Watts (35%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB should be a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		63360 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 5760 (10%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB should be much (about 99%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12224 (99%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 512MB is superior to the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		10260 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2140 (21%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, 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 faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.