GeForce GTX 650 Ti vs Radeon HD 3850 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, which comes with core speeds of 668 MHz on the GPU, and 828 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 650 Ti		110 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (47%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 650 Ti should in theory be much faster than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650 Ti		86400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 33408 (63%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 650 Ti will be quite a bit (about 456%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650 Ti		59392 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 48704 (456%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 650 Ti should be quite a bit (about 39%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650 Ti		14848 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core 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 rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.