GeForce GTX 570 vs Radeon HD 3850 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, which comes with clock speeds of 668 MHz on the GPU, and 828 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 570		219 Watts
	Difference: 144 Watts (192%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 570, in theory, should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		152000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 99008 (187%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 570 should be quite a bit (approximately 311%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		43920 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 33232 (311%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 570 should be much (approximately 174%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		29280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18592 (174%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number 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 calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.