GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB vs Radeon HD 3850 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, which features a 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 is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		75 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		143 Watts
	Difference: 68 Watts (91%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB should in theory be a small bit superior to the Radeon HD 3850 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		63360 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 10368 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB will be quite a bit (approximately 130%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13936 (130%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 1GB is superior to the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB, but only just. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		10260 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 428 (4%)

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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once 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, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. 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 lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.