GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) vs Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Intro

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) features a GPU core speed of 650 MHz, and the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM is set to run at 970 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 128 Stream Processors, 64 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

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

Price Comparison

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords, and might not be the exact same card listed on this page. We have no control over the accuracy of their search results.

GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Radeon HD 3850 256MB Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Specifications

Model	GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)	Radeon HD 3850 256MB
Manufacturer	nVidia	ATi
Year	Dec 2007	Nov 19, 2007
Code Name	G92	RV670 PRO
Fab Process	65 nm	55 nm
Bus	PCIe x16 2.0	PCIe 2.0 x16/AGP 8x
Memory	512 MB	256 MB
Core Speed	650 MHz	668 MHz
Shader Speed	1625 MHz	(N/A) MHz
Memory Speed	970 MHz	828 MHz
Unified Shaders	128	320(64x5)
Texture Mapping Units	64	16
Render Output Units	16	16
Bus Type	GDDR3	GDDR3
Bus Width	256-bit	256-bit
DirectX Version	DirectX 10	DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.0	OpenGL 3.0
Power (Max TDP)	135 watts	75 watts
Shader Model	4.0	4.1
Bandwidth	62080 MB/sec	52992 MB/sec
Texel Rate	41600 Mtexels/sec	10688 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	10400 Mpixels/sec	10688 Mpixels/sec

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number 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 graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.