GeForce GTX 460 1GB vs Radeon HD 3850 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 668 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 828 MHz on this specific model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 460 1GB will be 117% quicker than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 1GB is quite a bit (more or less 254%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 1GB should be much (more or less 102%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		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

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure 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 drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.