GeForce GTX 460 SE vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which comes with a clock speed of 668 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 828 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It features 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 460 SE will be 3% quicker than the Radeon HD 3850 X2 in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
	Difference: 2816 (3%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 SE will be a lot (approximately 46%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9824 (46%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 should be a little bit (approximately 3%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTX 460 SE, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 576 (3%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should 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 anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core 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 also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.