GeForce GTX 1050 3GB vs Radeon HD 3850 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 668 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR3 memory set to run at 828 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB should theoretically be much better than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		86016 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 33024 (62%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1050 3GB will be quite a bit (about 525%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		66816 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 56128 (525%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		33408 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22720 (213%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over 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 memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.