GeForce GTX 1070 vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

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

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 1070 will be 147% faster than the Radeon HD 3850 X2 overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1070		262144 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
	Difference: 156160 (147%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1070 will be quite a bit (more or less 745%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1070		180720 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 159344 (745%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1070 will be a lot (more or less 351%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 3850 X2, and also able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1070		96384 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 75008 (351%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.