GeForce GTX 460 SE vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which features GPU core speed of 668 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory set to run at 828 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 460 SE should theoretically be a bit superior to the Radeon HD 3850 X2 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
	Difference: 2816 (3%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 SE is much (more or less 46%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9824 (46%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 X2 is the winner, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 576 (3%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes 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, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.