GeForce GTS 150 vs Radeon HD 3690/3830

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3690/3830, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 668 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a frequency of 828 MHz on this card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		75 Watts
GeForce GTS 150		141 Watts
	Difference: 66 Watts (88%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTS 150 will be 21% quicker than the Radeon HD 3690/3830 in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		32000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		26496 MB/sec
	Difference: 5504 (21%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 150 is a lot (approximately 343%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3690/3830. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		47360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36672 (343%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 150 is the winner, though only just barely. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		11840 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1152 (11%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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 memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.