GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, which features core speeds of 668 MHz on the GPU, and 828 MHz on the 256 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 175 Watts (233%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 480 should in theory be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 124416 (235%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 will be a lot (approximately 293%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31312 (293%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 will be quite a bit (approximately 214%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22912 (214%)

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.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

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