GeForce GTS 450 vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 775 MHz. The GDDR4 RAM runs at a speed of 1125 MHz on this card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 3870 1GB should perform much faster than the GeForce GTS 450 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 14272 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 is a lot (about 102%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12656 (102%)

Pixel Rate

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

GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.