GeForce GTX 960 vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which comes with GPU core speed of 668 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM set to run at 828 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 960 should in theory be a bit better than the Radeon HD 3850 X2 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
	Difference: 6016 (6%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 will be a lot (approximately 237%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 50752 (237%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 will be a lot (approximately 69%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 3850 X2, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14688 (69%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.