GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs Radeon HD 6770

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6770, which features a GPU core clock speed of 900 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1050 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 800 Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		106 Watts
Radeon HD 6770		108 Watts
	Difference: 2 Watts (2%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6770 should be a little bit faster than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770		67200 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 9472 (16%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6770 should be a lot (more or less 44%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770		36000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10944 (44%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6770 is superior to the GeForce GTS 450 1GB, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770		14400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1872 (15%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum 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 the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.