GeForce GTX 465 vs Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 668 MHz. The GDDR3 memory runs at a speed of 828 MHz on this particular 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 256MB		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 465		200 Watts
	Difference: 125 Watts (167%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 465 should theoretically perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 465		102592 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 49600 (94%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 465 should be a lot (approximately 150%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 465		26708 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16020 (150%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 465 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 465		19424 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8736 (82%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should 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, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). 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 ability to get to the maximum fill rate.