GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which features a clock frequency of 668 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 828 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 470 should be 26% faster than the Radeon HD 3850 X2 overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
	Difference: 27936 (26%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 will be much (approximately 59%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12616 (59%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 is a bit (approximately 14%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3850 X2, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2904 (14%)

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 max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.