GeForce GT 450 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5850, which features a core clock speed of 725 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 1440(288x5) SPUs, 72 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		106 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (42%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5850 should be 33% quicker than the GeForce GT 450 (OEM) in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32000 (33%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 should be much (about 175%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 450 (OEM). (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		18960 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 33240 (175%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 will be quite a bit (about 22%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 450 (OEM), and also capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		18960 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4240 (22%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per 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 video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.