GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs Radeon HD 3850 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 668 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a speed of 828 MHz on this model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		160 Watts
	Difference: 85 Watts (113%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 460 2GB should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 62208 (117%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 2GB should be quite a bit (about 254%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 27112 (254%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 2GB is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one 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 higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.