GeForce GTS 450 vs Radeon HD 3850 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 668 MHz. The GDDR3 memory works at a speed of 828 MHz on this particular model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		75 Watts
GeForce GTS 450		106 Watts
	Difference: 31 Watts (41%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTS 450 should in theory perform just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 4736 (9%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 should be quite a bit (about 134%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14368 (134%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 is a bit (about 17%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed 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 graphics 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 maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.