GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which features a clock speed of 668 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 828 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3850 X2, in theory, should perform a small bit faster than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
	Difference: 7488 (8%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti is quite a bit (approximately 35%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7424 (35%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti is a little bit (approximately 1%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 3850 X2, and able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 224 (1%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.