GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB vs Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, which features a core clock speed of 668 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 828 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 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 256MB		75 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		143 Watts
	Difference: 68 Watts (91%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB should in theory be a little bit better than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB in general. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		63360 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 10368 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB will be much (more or less 130%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13936 (130%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 256MB will be a small bit (more or less 4%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB, and also capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at 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 that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.