GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which comes with GPU clock speed of 668 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory running at 828 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 should perform a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 X2 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		111888 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
	Difference: 5904 (6%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 is a lot (more or less 94%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		41472 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20096 (94%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 is a lot (approximately 33%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5248 (33%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of 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 fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.