GeForce 8800 GT 256MB vs Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, which comes with GPU clock speed of 668 MHz, and 256 MB of GDDR3 RAM set to run at 828 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 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 256MB		75 Watts
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		105 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (40%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3850 256MB should in theory perform a bit faster than the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB overall. (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 much (more or less 214%) better at texture 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 high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 256MB is the winner, but only just. (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.