GeForce 8800 Ultra vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 668 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a speed of 828 MHz on this particular card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3850 X2 is 2% faster than the GeForce 8800 Ultra overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
	Difference: 2304 (2%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 Ultra is much (about 83%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17792 (83%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 is quite a bit (more or less 46%) better at FSAA than the GeForce 8800 Ultra, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6688 (46%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.