GeForce GTX 650 vs Radeon HD 3850 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 668 MHz. The GDDR3 memory works at a speed of 828 MHz on this particular card. 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)

GeForce GTX 650		64 Watts
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
	Difference: 11 Watts (17%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 650 should theoretically perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650		80000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 27008 (51%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 650 should be quite a bit (about 217%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650		33856 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 23168 (217%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 650 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650		16928 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6240 (58%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 card can possibly record to the 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 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 is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.