GeForce GT 450 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, which has a core clock speed of 775 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GT 450 (OEM) should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		96000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 38400 (67%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 450 (OEM) should be a lot (more or less 53%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		18960 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6560 (53%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GT 450 (OEM) is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		18960 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6560 (53%)

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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

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