GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5850, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 725 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this model. It features 1440(288x5) SPUs as well as 72 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		106 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (42%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5850 is 122% faster than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 70272 (122%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 will be much (about 108%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 27144 (108%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5850 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10672 (85%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock 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 fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.