GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, which has a core clock speed of 668 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 828 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It features 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		75 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 122 Watts (163%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should in theory be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 75008 (142%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be a lot (approximately 619%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 66112 (619%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be quite a bit (approximately 80%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, and able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8512 (80%)

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 moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.