GeForce 9800 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which features clock speeds of 668 MHz on the GPU, and 828 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3850 X2 should be 84% faster than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 48384 (84%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GT 512MB should be much (more or less 57%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12224 (57%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 X2 is superior to the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11776 (123%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core 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 is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.