GeForce GTS 450 vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 900 MHz on this specific model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 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 4870 1GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 44 Watts (42%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 4870 1GB should be much faster than the GeForce GTS 450 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 57472 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 1GB is just a bit (about 20%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTS 450. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4944 (20%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 450 is the winner, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock 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 in a 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. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill 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.