GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs Radeon HD 3690/3830

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3690/3830, which comes with a core clock frequency of 668 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 828 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It features 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		75 Watts
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 31 Watts (41%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTS 450 1GB should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3690/3830 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		26496 MB/sec
	Difference: 31232 (118%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 1GB will be a lot (about 134%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3690/3830. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14368 (134%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 450 1GB is the winner, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		12528 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units 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 one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.