GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs Radeon HD 3850 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, which has a core clock frequency of 668 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 828 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTS 450 1GB should perform just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 1GB should be a lot (more or less 134%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 1GB should be a little bit (about 17%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, and also capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		12528 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video 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 most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.