GeForce GTX 295 vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare those specifications 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 particular model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 295 should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 X2 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		223776 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
	Difference: 117792 (111%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 295 will be a lot (about 331%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		92160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 70784 (331%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 295 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		32256 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10880 (51%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of 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 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 chip can possibly write to its local memory in one 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 - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.