GeForce GTX 460 SE vs Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Intro

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

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 SE		150 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 460 SE will be 105% faster than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 55808 (105%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 SE is quite a bit (about 192%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20512 (192%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 SE is superior to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10112 (95%)

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 transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.