GeForce GTX 650 Ti vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which comes with a clock frequency of 668 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 828 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 3850 X2 should theoretically be a lot better than the GeForce GTX 650 Ti overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 650 Ti		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 19584 (23%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 650 Ti should be a lot (more or less 178%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650 Ti		59392 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 38016 (178%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 should be quite a bit (more or less 44%) better at AA than the GeForce GTX 650 Ti, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 650 Ti		14848 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6528 (44%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.