GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which comes with a clock speed of 625 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 993 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 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 4850 512MB		110 Watts
	Difference: 4 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4850 512MB should theoretically be a small bit better than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 5824 (10%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 1GB should be a bit (about 0%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 56 (0%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 450 1GB is superior to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		12528 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2528 (25%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across 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 the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics 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 amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. 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 quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.