GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which comes with clock speeds of 668 MHz on the GPU, and 828 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3850 X2 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 48384 (84%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB should be quite a bit (more or less 46%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9824 (46%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 is quite a bit (more or less 106%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB, and also capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10976 (106%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 are 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 higher the texel rate, 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 card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.