GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 668 MHz. The GDDR3 memory is set to run at a frequency of 828 MHz on this card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB should be much faster than the Radeon HD 3850 X2 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
	Difference: 86400 (82%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB will be much (about 131%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28032 (131%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15680 (73%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video 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 most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to 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 ability to reach the maximum fill rate.