GeForce GTX 1050 vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 668 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory set to run at 828 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 1050 should perform a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 X2 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050		114688 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
	Difference: 8704 (8%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1050 is much (more or less 153%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050		54160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32784 (153%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1050 is much (more or less 103%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3850 X2, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050		43328 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21952 (103%)

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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.