GeForce GTS 450 vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 825 MHz. The GDDR3 memory works at a frequency of 900 MHz on this model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTS 450 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 57472 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB should be a bit (approximately 5%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 450. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1344 (5%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB is quite a bit (more or less 111%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTS 450, and also able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13872 (111%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 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, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.