GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) vs Radeon HD 3850 512MB

Intro

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) has a clock frequency of 650 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 970 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 65 nm design. It is made up of 128 SPUs, 64 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, which has GPU clock speed of 668 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM set to run at 828 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

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 512MB Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Specifications

Model	GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)	Radeon HD 3850 512MB
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	512 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 maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 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 AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.