GeForce GTS 450 vs Radeon HD 3850 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 668 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a frequency of 828 MHz on this specific card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
GeForce GTS 450		106 Watts
	Difference: 31 Watts (41%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTS 450 should be a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 4736 (9%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 is a lot (approximately 134%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14368 (134%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 450 is the winner, but only just. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the 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 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate 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 drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.