GeForce GTS 450 vs Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, which features core speeds of 668 MHz on the GPU, and 828 MHz on the 256 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

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

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTS 450 should perform a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB in general. (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 anisotropic 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 just a bit (approximately 17%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, and should be capable of handling higher screen 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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.