GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs Radeon HD 3850 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, which has clock speeds of 668 MHz on the GPU, and 828 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
	Difference: 41 Watts (55%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti should theoretically perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 45504 (86%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti should be much (approximately 169%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18112 (169%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 550 Ti is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10912 (102%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.