GeForce 9800 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 3850 512MB

Intro

The GeForce 9800 GT 512MB uses a 65/55 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 600 MHz. The GDDR3 memory is set to run at a frequency of 900 MHz on this particular model. It features 112 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 668 MHz. The GDDR3 memory works at a frequency of 828 MHz on this card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.