GeForce GTS 450 vs Radeon HD 4850 2GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, which comes with core speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR4 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units 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 4850 2GB		110 Watts
	Difference: 4 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4850 2GB should in theory be a small bit better than the GeForce GTS 450 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 5824 (10%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 should be a bit (approximately 0%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 56 (0%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 450 is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2528 (25%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher 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 most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as 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, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.