GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, which comes with GPU clock speed of 668 MHz, and 256 MB of GDDR3 RAM set to run at 828 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		75 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 122 Watts (163%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should theoretically perform much faster than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 75008 (142%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be a lot (approximately 619%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 66112 (619%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is quite a bit (more or less 80%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8512 (80%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface 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 ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock 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 output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.