GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 3690/3830

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3690/3830, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 668 MHz. The GDDR3 memory runs at a speed of 828 MHz on this specific model. 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 (OEM)		150 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) should in theory be a lot better than the Radeon HD 3690/3830 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) will be a lot (about 241%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3690/3830. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		36400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 25712 (241%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) is quite a bit (more or less 95%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 3690/3830, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it 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 AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.