GeForce GTX 560 Ti vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB, which features GPU clock speed of 825 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR4 memory set to run at 1126 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB should theoretically be a small bit faster than the GeForce GTX 560 Ti overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 560 Ti		128256 MB/sec
	Difference: 15872 (12%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 Ti should be a lot (more or less 99%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560 Ti		52608 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 26208 (99%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB is superior to the GeForce GTX 560 Ti, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 560 Ti		26304 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 96 (0%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can 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 colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.