GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, which comes with GPU core speed of 668 MHz, and 256 MB of GDDR3 RAM 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

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		75 Watts
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 31 Watts (41%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTS 450 1GB should be 9% quicker than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 4736 (9%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 1GB will be a lot (approximately 134%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14368 (134%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 1GB will be a little bit (more or less 17%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. 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 quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.