Geforce GTX 780 vs Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, which has core speeds of 668 MHz on the GPU, and 828 MHz on the 256 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		75 Watts
Geforce GTX 780		250 Watts
	Difference: 175 Watts (233%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Geforce GTX 780 should theoretically perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB in general. (explain)

Geforce GTX 780		288384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 235392 (444%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 780 will be much (more or less 1450%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

Geforce GTX 780		165696 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 155008 (1450%)

Pixel Rate

The Geforce GTX 780 should be a lot (approximately 288%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Geforce GTX 780		41424 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 30736 (288%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). 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 ability to reach the max fill rate.