GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB vs Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, which has GPU clock speed of 668 MHz, and 256 MB of GDDR3 RAM running at 828 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 320(64x5) SPUs, 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 256MB		75 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		143 Watts
	Difference: 68 Watts (91%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB should theoretically be a bit better than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB overall. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		63360 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 10368 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB is much (about 130%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13936 (130%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 256MB is the winner, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		10260 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 428 (4%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

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