GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which comes with core speeds of 668 MHz on the GPU, and 828 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3850 X2 should be 71% quicker than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		62080 MB/sec
	Difference: 43904 (71%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) will be much (more or less 95%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		41600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20224 (95%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 X2 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10976 (106%)

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 max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's 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 processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.