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

Intro

Compare 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 made up of 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation 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

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 3870 1GB should be a small bit faster than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) overall. (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 a lot (more or less 235%) faster with regards to texture 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

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 1GB is the winner, but not by far. (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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many 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.