GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 825 MHz. The GDDR4 memory runs at a frequency of 1126 MHz on this specific model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB is 150% quicker than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 86400 (150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB is a bit (about 5%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1344 (5%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB will be a lot (about 111%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13872 (111%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.