GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs Radeon R9 390 8G

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 390 8G, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1500 MHz on this model. It features 2560 SPUs as well as 160 Texture Address Units and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		106 Watts
Radeon R9 390 8G		275 Watts
	Difference: 169 Watts (159%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 390 8G should theoretically be a lot faster than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		384000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 326272 (565%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390 8G should be a lot (about 539%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		160000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 134944 (539%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 390 8G is superior to the GeForce GTS 450 1GB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		64000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 51472 (411%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.