GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs Radeon HD 3690/3830

Intro

Compare those specifications 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 RAM runs at a speed of 828 MHz on this specific card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 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

The GeForce GTS 450 1GB should in theory be much faster than the Radeon HD 3690/3830 overall. (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 (more or less 134%) more effective 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

The GeForce GTS 450 1GB will be a little bit (more or less 17%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3690/3830, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.