GeForce 8800 GT 256MB vs Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, which has a clock speed of 668 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 828 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		75 Watts
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		105 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (40%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3850 256MB, in theory, should perform a little bit faster than the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		44800 MB/sec
	Difference: 8192 (18%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GT 256MB is quite a bit (about 214%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22912 (214%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 256MB should be a small bit (approximately 11%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB, and also capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1088 (11%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 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, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

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