VIA Castle Rock vs ATI Radeon HD 3850

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Primary details

GPU architecture, market segment, value for money and other general parameters compared.

Place in the ranking1100not rated
Place by popularitynot in top-100not in top-100
Cost-effectiveness evaluation0.02no data
Power efficiency0.94no data
ArchitectureTeraScale (2005−2013)no data
GPU code nameRV670CLE266
Market segmentDesktopLaptop
Release date19 November 2007 (16 years ago)1 January 2003 (21 year ago)
Launch price (MSRP)$179 no data

Cost-effectiveness evaluation

Performance to price ratio. The higher, the better.

no data

Detailed specifications

General parameters such as number of shaders, GPU core base clock and boost clock speeds, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. Note that power consumption of some graphics cards can well exceed their nominal TDP, especially when overclocked.

Pipelines / CUDA cores3203
Core clock speed668 MHz2 MHz
Number of transistors666 millionno data
Manufacturing process technology55 nmno data
Power consumption (TDP)75 Wattno data
Texture fill rate10.69no data
Floating-point processing power0.4275 TFLOPSno data
ROPs16no data
TMUs16no data

Form factor & compatibility

Information on compatibility with other computer components. Useful when choosing a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop graphics cards it's interface and bus (motherboard compatibility), additional power connectors (power supply compatibility).

InterfacePCIe 2.0 x16no data
Length208 mmno data
Width1-slotno data
Supplementary power connectors1x 6-pinno data

VRAM capacity and type

Parameters of VRAM installed: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Integrated GPUs have no dedicated video RAM and use a shared part of system RAM.

Memory typeGDDR3no data
Maximum RAM amount1 GBno data
Memory bus width256 Bitno data
Memory clock speed830 MHzno data
Memory bandwidth53.12 GB/sno data
Shared memory-+

Connectivity and outputs

Types and number of video connectors present on the reviewed GPUs. As a rule, data in this section is precise only for desktop reference ones (so-called Founders Edition for NVIDIA chips). OEM manufacturers may change the number and type of output ports, while for notebook cards availability of certain video outputs ports depends on the laptop model rather than on the card itself.

Display Connectors2x DVI, 1x S-Videono data

API compatibility

List of supported 3D and general-purpose computing APIs, including their specific versions.

DirectX10.1 (10_1)no data
Shader Model4.1no data
OpenGL3.3no data
OpenCLN/Ano data
VulkanN/A-

Pros & cons summary


Recency 19 November 2007 1 January 2003

ATI HD 3850 has an age advantage of 4 years.

We couldn't decide between Radeon HD 3850 and VIA Castle Rock. We've got no test results to judge.

Be aware that Radeon HD 3850 is a desktop card while VIA Castle Rock is a notebook one.


Should you still have questions concerning choice between the reviewed GPUs, ask them in Comments section, and we shall answer.

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ATI Radeon HD 3850
Radeon HD 3850
VIA Castle Rock
Castle Rock

Comparisons with similar GPUs

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Community ratings

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3.4 205 votes

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5 2 votes

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Questions & comments

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