GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5870, which has GPU core speed of 850 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1600(320x5) Stream Processors, 80 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		106 Watts
Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 82 Watts (77%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5870 should perform much faster than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 95872 (166%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 should be quite a bit (more or less 171%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 42944 (171%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5870 is superior to the GeForce GTS 450 1GB, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14672 (117%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock 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 rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.