GeForce GT 450 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7970, which has a clock frequency of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1375 MHz. It also features a 384-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 7970 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GT 450 (OEM) overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 168000 (175%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 will be quite a bit (about 524%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 450 (OEM). (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		18960 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 99440 (524%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 should be quite a bit (more or less 56%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GT 450 (OEM), and also able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		18960 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10640 (56%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.