GeForce GTX 1050 vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which has a core clock speed of 668 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 828 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 1050 should perform a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 X2 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050		114688 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
	Difference: 8704 (8%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1050 is a lot (approximately 153%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050		54160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32784 (153%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1050 is much (about 103%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3850 X2, and also able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050		43328 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21952 (103%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, 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 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 graphics 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 video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs 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 output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.