GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5870, which features a clock speed of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1200 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 1600(320x5) SPUs, 80 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 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 82 Watts (77%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5870 should in theory be a lot superior to 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 is a lot (approximately 171%) more effective at 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 running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5870 is superior to the GeForce GTS 450 1GB, by a large margin. (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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.