GeForce GTX 460 SE vs Radeon HD 3850 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, which features GPU core speed of 668 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR3 memory running at 828 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 SE		150 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 460 SE should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 55808 (105%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 SE will be a lot (approximately 192%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20512 (192%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 SE is superior to the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.