GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 290X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this specific card. It features 2816 SPUs along with 176 Texture Address Units and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		106 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 194 Watts (183%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 290X will be 454% quicker than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 262272 (454%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X is much (more or less 462%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 115744 (462%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290X is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 38672 (309%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.