GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) vs Radeon HD 3850 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 668 MHz. The GDDR3 memory runs at a frequency of 828 MHz on this particular model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 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 1GB		75 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		135 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (80%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) should perform just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		62080 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 9088 (17%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) is quite a bit (more or less 289%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		41600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30912 (289%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 1GB is a bit (more or less 3%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G92), and also should be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 288 (3%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.