GeForce GTX 460 vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which features a clock speed of 668 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 828 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 3850 X2 should theoretically be a lot superior to the GeForce GTX 460 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 19584 (23%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 should be quite a bit (approximately 77%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		37800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16424 (77%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 will be quite a bit (about 32%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GTX 460, and also able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5176 (32%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. 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 many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.