GeForce GT 420 vs Radeon HD 3850 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, which comes with a clock frequency of 668 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 828 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 420		50 Watts
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3850 512MB will be 84% quicker than the GeForce GT 420 in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
GeForce GT 420		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 24192 (84%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 512MB should be a lot (approximately 91%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 420. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5088 (91%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 512MB will be quite a bit (about 282%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GT 420, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 420		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7888 (282%)

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.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core 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 fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.