GeForce GTS 450 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7870, which has a GPU core clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation 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 7870		6230 points
GeForce GTS 450		1453 points
	Difference: 4777 (329%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450		106 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 69 Watts (65%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7870 should in theory be quite a bit superior to the GeForce GTS 450 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 95872 (166%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 is much (approximately 219%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 450. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 54944 (219%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 is superior to the GeForce GTS 450, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19472 (155%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.