GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 925 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1500 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1536 Stream Processors, 96 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		106 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 79 Watts (75%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7870 XT is 233% quicker than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 134272 (233%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT should be much (about 254%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 63744 (254%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 XT is superior to the GeForce GTS 450 1GB, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's 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 many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.