GeForce GTS 450 vs Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, which has a clock speed of 775 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTS 450 should be 0% quicker than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 128 (0%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 should be much (about 102%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12656 (102%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 is a bit (more or less 1%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 128 (1%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.