GeForce GTX 460 vs Radeon HD 3690/3830

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3690/3830, which has a clock speed of 668 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 828 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 460 should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 3690/3830 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		26496 MB/sec
	Difference: 59904 (226%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 will be much (approximately 254%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3690/3830. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		37800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 27112 (254%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 is much (about 52%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3690/3830, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5512 (52%)

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 transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. 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 rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.