Geforce GTX 680 vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which features GPU core speed of 668 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM running at 828 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Geforce GTX 680 should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 3850 X2 in general. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		192256 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
	Difference: 86272 (81%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 should be a lot (approximately 502%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		128768 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 107392 (502%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Geforce GTX 680 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		32192 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10816 (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 max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the 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 processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.