GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 270X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1400 MHz on this model. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 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 R9 270X		180 Watts
	Difference: 74 Watts (70%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 270X should in theory be a lot superior to the GeForce GTS 450 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 121472 (210%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X will be a lot (approximately 219%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 54944 (219%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X should be a lot (approximately 155%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		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 largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. 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 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 get to the maximum fill rate.