GeForce 9800 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare those specifications 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 makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 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 Radeon HD 3850 X2 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 48384 (84%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GT 512MB should be a lot (approximately 57%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12224 (57%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 should be much (approximately 123%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11776 (123%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum 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 clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.