GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, which features core clock speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		106 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		250 Watts
	Difference: 144 Watts (136%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB should in theory perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		127104 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 69376 (120%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB will be a lot (about 100%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24944 (100%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB is superior to the GeForce GTS 450 1GB, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		20000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7472 (60%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.