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GeForce GTX 460 vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

The GeForce GTX 460 comes with a core clock speed of 675 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also features a 192-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 336 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 24 Raster Operation Units.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which has clock speeds of 668 MHz on the GPU, and 828 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3850 X2 will be 23% faster than the GeForce GTX 460 in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2 105984 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 86400 MB/sec
Difference: 19584 (23%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 should be much (approximately 77%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 37800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2 21376 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 16424 (77%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 X2 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2 21376 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 16200 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 5176 (32%)

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

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GeForce GTX 460

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 3850 X2

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce GTX 460 Radeon HD 3850 X2
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year July 2010 Apr 4, 2008
Code Name GF104 RV670 PRO
Memory 768 MB 512 MB (x2)
Core Speed 675 MHz 668 MHz (x2)
Memory Speed 3600 MHz 1656 MHz (x2)
Power (Max TDP) 150 watts (Unknown) watts
Bandwidth 86400 MB/sec 105984 MB/sec
Texel Rate 37800 Mtexels/sec 21376 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 16200 Mpixels/sec 21376 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 336 320(64x5) (x2)
Texture Mapping Units 56 16 (x2)
Render Output Units 24 16 (x2)
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR3
Bus Width 192-bit 256-bit (x2)
Fab Process 40 nm 55 nm
Transistors 1950 million (Unknown) million
Bus PCIe x16 PCIe 2.0 x16/(internal PCIe 1.1 x16)
DirectX Version DirectX 11 DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.1 OpenGL 3.0

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce GTX 460

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 3850 X2

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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