GeForce GTS 150 vs Radeon HD 3690/3830

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3690/3830, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 668 MHz. The GDDR3 memory is set to run at a frequency of 828 MHz on this model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		75 Watts
GeForce GTS 150		141 Watts
	Difference: 66 Watts (88%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTS 150 should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3690/3830 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		32000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		26496 MB/sec
	Difference: 5504 (21%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 150 is a lot (about 343%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3690/3830. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		47360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36672 (343%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTS 150 is a bit (more or less 11%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3690/3830, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		11840 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1152 (11%)

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 moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, 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, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. 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 fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.