GeForce GTX 660 Ti vs Radeon HD 3850 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, which features a core clock frequency of 668 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 828 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It features 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 660 Ti		150 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 660 Ti should theoretically be much better than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		144000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 91008 (172%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 Ti will be much (about 859%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		102480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 91792 (859%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 660 Ti is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		21960 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11272 (105%)

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 transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.