GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, which features clock speeds of 668 MHz on the GPU, and 828 MHz on the 256 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 175 Watts (233%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 480 will be 235% faster than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 124416 (235%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 will be much (more or less 293%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31312 (293%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 is a lot (approximately 214%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22912 (214%)

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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the 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 - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.