GeForce GTS 450 vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which has GPU core speed of 775 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR4 memory running at 1125 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB should theoretically be quite a bit 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 will be a lot (approximately 102%) more effective at anisotropic 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

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 450 is a better choice, but not by far. (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 maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. 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, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.