GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which features GPU core speed of 668 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory set to run at 828 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 470 should in theory be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 3850 X2 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
	Difference: 27936 (26%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 is quite a bit (about 59%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12616 (59%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 470 is superior to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, but only just. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2904 (14%)

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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once 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, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.