GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB vs Radeon HD 3850 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, which features core speeds of 668 MHz on the GPU, and 828 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		143 Watts
	Difference: 68 Watts (91%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB should be a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		63360 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 10368 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB will be a lot (about 130%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13936 (130%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 512MB is a small bit (about 4%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.