GeForce GTS 450 vs Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, which features core speeds of 775 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTS 450 should in theory be just a bit superior to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 will be quite a bit (more or less 102%) better at AF 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 will be a bit (more or less 1%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, 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 most pixels the video card can 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 core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.