GeForce GTX 285 1GB vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 825 MHz. The GDDR4 RAM runs at a speed of 1126 MHz on this particular model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 285 1GB should be a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 285 1GB		158976 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
	Difference: 14848 (10%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 285 1GB is quite a bit (more or less 96%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 285 1GB		51840 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 25440 (96%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		20736 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5664 (27%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, 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 most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out 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 fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.