GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 3850 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, which has a core clock speed of 668 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 828 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 122 Watts (163%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should be 142% quicker than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 75008 (142%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is much (more or less 619%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 66112 (619%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is much (about 80%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core 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 a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel 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 max fill rate.