GeForce GTX 1050 3GB vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which has a core clock speed of 668 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 828 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 should theoretically be a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		86016 MB/sec
	Difference: 19968 (23%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1050 3GB will be quite a bit (about 213%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		66816 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 45440 (213%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		33408 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12032 (56%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called 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 - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.