GeForce GTX 650 Ti vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which comes with GPU clock speed of 668 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM running at 828 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 3850 X2 should in theory be quite a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 650 Ti in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 650 Ti		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 19584 (23%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 650 Ti is much (about 178%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650 Ti		59392 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 38016 (178%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 will be quite a bit (approximately 44%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 650 Ti, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 650 Ti		14848 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6528 (44%)

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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock 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 maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.