GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which comes with core speeds of 668 MHz on the GPU, and 828 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 970 should theoretically be much superior to the Radeon HD 3850 X2 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
	Difference: 118016 (111%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 should be quite a bit (approximately 411%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 87824 (411%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 is a lot (about 214%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 3850 X2, and will be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 45824 (214%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the 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 amount 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 clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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 of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.