GeForce GT 450 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 668 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a frequency of 828 MHz on this specific card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 3850 X2 should theoretically be a little bit better than the GeForce GT 450 (OEM) in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 9984 (10%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 is a small bit (more or less 13%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 450 (OEM). (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		18960 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2416 (13%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 X2 is superior to the GeForce GT 450 (OEM), though only just barely. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		18960 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2416 (13%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This 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 card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.