GeForce GTX 465 vs Radeon HD 3850 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 668 MHz. The GDDR3 memory is set to run at a speed of 828 MHz on this particular model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 465		200 Watts
	Difference: 125 Watts (167%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 465 should be 94% quicker than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 465		102592 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 49600 (94%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 465 should be quite a bit (about 150%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 465		26708 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16020 (150%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 465 is superior to the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 465		19424 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		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 largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.