GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6970, which comes with GPU clock speed of 880 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1375 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1536 SPUs, 96 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		106 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 144 Watts (136%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6970 should in theory be a lot superior to the GeForce GTS 450 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 118272 (205%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be a lot (about 237%) better at AF than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 59424 (237%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is a lot (approximately 125%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15632 (125%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. 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 rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.