GeForce GTS 150 vs Radeon HD 3690/3830

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3690/3830, which has a core clock frequency of 668 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 828 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It features 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		75 Watts
GeForce GTS 150		141 Watts
	Difference: 66 Watts (88%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTS 150 should in theory be much better than the Radeon HD 3690/3830 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		32000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		26496 MB/sec
	Difference: 5504 (21%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 150 will be much (approximately 343%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3690/3830. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		47360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36672 (343%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTS 150 should be just a bit (more or less 11%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 3690/3830, and able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		11840 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1152 (11%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster 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 can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better 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 a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its 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 - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.