GeForce GT 450 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which has GPU clock speed of 668 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory running at 828 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3850 X2 is 10% quicker than the GeForce GT 450 (OEM) overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 9984 (10%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 should be a small bit (approximately 13%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 450 (OEM). (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		18960 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2416 (13%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 is a bit (approximately 13%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 450 (OEM), and will be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		18960 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2416 (13%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.