GeForce GTS 450 vs Radeon HD 4870 2GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 900 MHz on this particular model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450		106 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 44 Watts (42%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4870 2GB should be 100% faster than the GeForce GTS 450 in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 57472 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 2GB should be a bit (approximately 20%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 450. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4944 (20%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 should be a little bit (more or less 4%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, and should be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 528 (4%)

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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the 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 is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount 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 rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.