GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which has a GPU core clock speed of 750 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		106 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 44 Watts (42%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4870 1GB should in theory be quite a bit better than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 57472 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 1GB should be a small bit (more or less 20%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4944 (20%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 450 1GB is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, though not by far. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		12528 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 528 (4%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 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 in a second.

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