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GeForce GTX 460 1GB vs Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Intro

The GeForce GTX 460 1GB uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 675 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 900 MHz on this model. It features 336 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, which has core clock speeds of 668 MHz on the GPU, and 828 MHz on the 256 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB 75 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 1GB 160 Watts
Difference: 85 Watts (113%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 460 1GB should in theory be much faster than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB 115200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB 52992 MB/sec
Difference: 62208 (117%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 1GB should be much (more or less 254%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB 37800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB 10688 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 27112 (254%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 1GB is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB 21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB 10688 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 10912 (102%)

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

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GeForce GTX 460 1GB

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce GTX 460 1GB Radeon HD 3850 256MB
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year July 2010 Nov 19, 2007
Code Name GF104 RV670 PRO
Memory 1024 MB 256 MB
Core Speed 675 MHz 668 MHz
Memory Speed 3600 MHz 1656 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 160 watts 75 watts
Bandwidth 115200 MB/sec 52992 MB/sec
Texel Rate 37800 Mtexels/sec 10688 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 21600 Mpixels/sec 10688 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 336 320(64x5)
Texture Mapping Units 56 16
Render Output Units 32 16
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR3
Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 40 nm 55 nm
Transistors 1950 million (Unknown) million
Bus PCIe x16 PCIe 2.0 x16/AGP 8x
DirectX Version DirectX 11 DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.1 OpenGL 3.0

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce GTX 460 1GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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