GeForce 8800 GT 256MB vs Radeon HD 3850 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, which features clock speeds of 668 MHz on the GPU, and 828 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		105 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (40%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3850 512MB should be 18% quicker than the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		44800 MB/sec
	Difference: 8192 (18%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GT 256MB will be much (approximately 214%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22912 (214%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 512MB is a better choice, but only just. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one 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 called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.