GeForce GTX 260 vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which features GPU clock speed of 668 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory set to run at 828 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 260 is 6% faster than the Radeon HD 3850 X2 in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 should be quite a bit (approximately 72%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15488 (72%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 is a lot (approximately 33%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTX 260, and also able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If 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 are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on 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 get to the max fill rate.