GeForce GTS 450 vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which comes with GPU clock speed of 668 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory running at 828 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3850 X2 should be 84% faster than the GeForce GTS 450 in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 48256 (84%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 will be a bit (more or less 17%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3680 (17%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 should be much (more or less 71%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTS 450, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8848 (71%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.