GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Intro

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

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 140 Watts (187%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 470 should theoretically perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 80928 (153%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 is quite a bit (approximately 218%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 23304 (218%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 470 is superior to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13592 (127%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 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 this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. 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 fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.