GeForce GTX 465 vs Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, which features core clock speeds of 668 MHz on the GPU, and 828 MHz on the 256 MB of GDDR3 memory. 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 256MB		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 465		200 Watts
	Difference: 125 Watts (167%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 465 should in theory be quite a bit superior to 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 is much (about 150%) more effective at AF 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 high levels of AA 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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory per 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 sometimes called 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 of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.