GeForce GTX 1050 3GB vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 668 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a speed of 828 MHz on this card. 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

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3850 X2 is 23% quicker than the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		86016 MB/sec
	Difference: 19968 (23%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1050 3GB is quite a bit (more or less 213%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		66816 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 45440 (213%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB is superior to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		33408 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12032 (56%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better 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 can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.