GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs Radeon HD 3690/3830

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3690/3830, which comes with a clock speed of 668 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 828 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 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 3690/3830		75 Watts
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 31 Watts (41%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTS 450 1GB is 118% quicker than the Radeon HD 3690/3830 in general, because of its higher data rate. (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 should be a lot (approximately 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

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 450 1GB is superior to the Radeon HD 3690/3830, 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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once 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 AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.