GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB vs Radeon HD 3850 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 668 MHz. The GDDR3 memory runs at a speed of 828 MHz on this card. 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 3850 1GB		75 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		143 Watts
	Difference: 68 Watts (91%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB should perform a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		63360 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 10368 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB is quite a bit (approximately 130%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13936 (130%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 1GB will be just a bit (approximately 4%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB, and will be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		10260 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 428 (4%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.