GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs Radeon HD 3850 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, which features a core clock frequency of 668 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 828 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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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

In theory, the GeForce GTS 450 1GB should perform a little 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 is a lot (approximately 134%) faster with regards to 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

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 450 1GB is a better choice, but not by far. (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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should 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 higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.