GeForce GTX 570 vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

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

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 570 should theoretically be much superior to the Radeon HD 3850 X2 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		152000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
	Difference: 46016 (43%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 570 will be a lot (approximately 105%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		43920 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22544 (105%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 570 is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		29280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7904 (37%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 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 anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video 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 most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as 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, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.