GeForce GTX 460 1GB vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which comes with a core clock frequency of 668 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 828 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 460 1GB should theoretically perform a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 X2 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
	Difference: 9216 (9%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 1GB is a lot (about 77%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16424 (77%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 1GB is a better choice, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 224 (1%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.