GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) vs Radeon HD 3850 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, which comes with a core clock speed of 668 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 828 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		75 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		135 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (80%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) should in theory be a small bit better than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		62080 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 9088 (17%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) should be quite a bit (approximately 289%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		41600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30912 (289%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 1GB should be a little bit (approximately 3%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G92), and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 288 (3%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.