GeForce GTS 450 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7970, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1375 MHz on this particular card. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon HD 7970		8225 points
GeForce GTS 450		1453 points
	Difference: 6772 (466%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450		106 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 144 Watts (136%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7970 should in theory be quite a bit better than the GeForce GTS 450 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 206272 (357%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 will be a lot (about 373%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTS 450. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 93344 (373%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 is quite a bit (more or less 136%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GTS 450, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17072 (136%)

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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant 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 max fill rate.