GeForce GTS 450 vs Radeon HD 3850 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, which features a core clock speed of 668 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 828 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		75 Watts
GeForce GTS 450		106 Watts
	Difference: 31 Watts (41%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTS 450 will be 9% quicker than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 4736 (9%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 should be a lot (approximately 134%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14368 (134%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 should be a little bit (about 17%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1840 (17%)

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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.