GeForce 8800 GT 256MB vs Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, which features GPU clock speed of 668 MHz, and 256 MB of GDDR3 memory running at 828 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, 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 GT 256MB		105 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (40%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 3850 256MB should in theory be just a bit better than the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		44800 MB/sec
	Difference: 8192 (18%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GT 256MB should be a lot (about 214%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22912 (214%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 256MB is superior to the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1088 (11%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses 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, 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 higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.