GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, which features a clock speed of 668 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 828 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 169 Watts (225%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB should in theory perform much faster than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 139392 (263%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB is much (more or less 362%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 38720 (362%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is superior to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 26368 (247%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling 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 that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.