GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon HD 3850 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, which comes with GPU clock speed of 668 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory running at 828 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 175 Watts (233%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 480 should in theory be much faster than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 124416 (235%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 is much (approximately 293%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31312 (293%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 480 is superior to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.