GeForce GTS 450 vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5870, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1200 MHz on this particular card. It features 1600(320x5) SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450		106 Watts
Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 82 Watts (77%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 5870 should in theory be a lot superior to the GeForce GTS 450 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 95872 (166%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 should be much (more or less 171%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTS 450. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 42944 (171%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 should be much (about 117%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GTS 450, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14672 (117%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.