GeForce GTX 650 Ti vs Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 650 Ti		110 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (47%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 650 Ti, in theory, should be much faster than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650 Ti		86400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 33408 (63%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 650 Ti is a lot (about 456%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650 Ti		59392 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 48704 (456%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 650 Ti is superior to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650 Ti		14848 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4160 (39%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 can be applied per second. This is calculated 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.