GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which features a core clock speed of 668 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 828 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 980 should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 X2 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
	Difference: 118016 (111%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 should be much (approximately 574%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 122752 (574%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 should be quite a bit (more or less 237%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 3850 X2, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 50688 (237%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.