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GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB vs Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Intro

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB comes with core speeds of 513 MHz on the GPU, and 792 MHz on the 640 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 96 SPUs along with 48 Texture Address Units and 20 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 668 MHz. The GDDR3 memory is set to run at a speed of 828 MHz on this particular card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB 75 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB 143 Watts
Difference: 68 Watts (91%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB should perform a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB overall. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB 63360 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB 52992 MB/sec
Difference: 10368 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB should be quite a bit (approximately 130%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB 24624 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB 10688 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 13936 (130%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 256MB is a better choice, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB 10688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB 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

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GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB Radeon HD 3850 256MB
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year Nov 2006 (640) Nov 19, 2007
Code Name G80 RV670 PRO
Memory 640 MB 256 MB
Core Speed 513 MHz 668 MHz
Memory Speed 1584 MHz 1656 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 143 watts 75 watts
Bandwidth 63360 MB/sec 52992 MB/sec
Texel Rate 24624 Mtexels/sec 10688 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 10260 Mpixels/sec 10688 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 96 320(64x5)
Texture Mapping Units 48 16
Render Output Units 20 16
Bus Type GDDR3 GDDR3
Bus Width 320-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 90 nm 55 nm
Transistors 681 million (Unknown) million
Bus PCIe x16 PCIe 2.0 x16/AGP 8x
DirectX Version DirectX 10 DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 3.0

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, 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, High Dynamic Range and higher screen 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 by the core 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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