GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs GeForce GTX 970

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 970, which comes with core clock speeds of 1050 MHz on the GPU, and 1750 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1664 SPUs as well as 104 TAUs and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		106 Watts
GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
	Difference: 39 Watts (37%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 970 should be 288% faster than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 166272 (288%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 will be quite a bit (more or less 336%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 84144 (336%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 is a lot (about 436%) better at AA than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 54672 (436%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.