GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs Radeon HD 3850 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, which features GPU clock speed of 668 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM 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

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
	Difference: 41 Watts (55%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 550 Ti is 86% quicker than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 45504 (86%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti should be a lot (more or less 169%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18112 (169%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti should be quite a bit (approximately 102%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.