GeForce GTX 1060 3GB vs Radeon HD 3850 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, which comes with GPU clock speed of 668 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory set to run 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

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		120 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (60%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 1060 3GB will be 271% faster than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		196608 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 143616 (271%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1060 3GB should be quite a bit (more or less 915%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		108432 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 97744 (915%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1060 3GB is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		72288 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 61600 (576%)

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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount 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 filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.