GeForce GT 450 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which uses a 55 nm design. ATi has clocked the core speed at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 900 MHz on this specific model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		106 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 244 Watts (230%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 should theoretically be much better than the GeForce GT 450 (OEM) in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 134400 (140%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 is quite a bit (about 216%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 450 (OEM). (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		18960 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41040 (216%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 is much (more or less 27%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GT 450 (OEM), and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		18960 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5040 (27%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is worked out 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core 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 rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.