GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which comes with a core clock frequency of 668 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 828 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 660, in theory, should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 3850 X2 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
	Difference: 38208 (36%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 will be much (approximately 267%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 57024 (267%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 660 is superior to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, but only just. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2144 (10%)

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 over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.