GeForce GTX 460 SE vs Radeon HD 3690/3830

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3690/3830, which features core speeds of 668 MHz on the GPU, and 828 MHz on the 256 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 SE		150 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 460 SE, in theory, should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 3690/3830 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		26496 MB/sec
	Difference: 82304 (311%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 SE will be quite a bit (more or less 192%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3690/3830. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20512 (192%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 SE should be a lot (more or less 95%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3690/3830, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		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 MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at 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 the video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as 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, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.