GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) vs Radeon HD 3850 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 668 MHz. The GDDR3 memory runs at a speed of 828 MHz on this particular card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		135 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (80%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) should theoretically be a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		62080 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 9088 (17%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) will be a lot (more or less 289%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		41600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30912 (289%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 512MB is a better choice, but only just. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 288 (3%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied 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 graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant 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 maximum fill rate.