GeForce GTS 450 vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which has a GPU core clock speed of 750 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 should in theory perform much faster than the GeForce GTS 450 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 172672 (299%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 should be a lot (about 139%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 450. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34944 (139%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4870 X2 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11472 (92%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at 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 the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant 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 max fill rate.