GeForce GTX 295 vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which comes with a core clock speed of 668 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 828 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 295 should be 111% quicker than the Radeon HD 3850 X2 in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		223776 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
	Difference: 117792 (111%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 295 will be much (approximately 331%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		92160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 70784 (331%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 295 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		32256 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10880 (51%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

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