GeForce GTS 450 vs Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, which comes with clock speeds of 668 MHz on the GPU, and 828 MHz on the 256 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 TAUs 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 GTS 450		106 Watts
	Difference: 31 Watts (41%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTS 450 is 9% faster than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 4736 (9%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 is a lot (more or less 134%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14368 (134%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 should be a small bit (about 17%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1840 (17%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a 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 Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.