GeForce GTX 950 vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

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

In theory, the Radeon HD 3850 X2 is 0% quicker than the GeForce GTX 950 in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950		105728 MB/sec
	Difference: 256 (0%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950 is much (more or less 130%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		49152 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 27776 (130%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950 is a lot (approximately 53%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 3850 X2, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		32768 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11392 (53%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.