GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which has GPU core speed of 668 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory running at 828 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 460 2GB should be 9% quicker than the Radeon HD 3850 X2 overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
	Difference: 9216 (9%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 2GB will be much (more or less 77%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16424 (77%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 2GB should be just a bit (about 1%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 3850 X2, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 224 (1%)

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 max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. 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 many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.