GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 668 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a speed of 828 MHz on this card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm should theoretically be a small bit better than the Radeon HD 3850 X2 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		111888 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
	Difference: 5904 (6%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm is a lot (about 94%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		41472 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20096 (94%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 X2 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 chip could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.