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GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs Radeon HD 4850 2GB

Intro

The GeForce GTS 450 1GB has a clock speed of 783 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 902 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 192 SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, which has a clock speed of 625 MHz and a GDDR4 memory speed of 993 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		106 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		110 Watts
	Difference: 4 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4850 2GB should in theory be a small bit faster than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 5824 (10%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 1GB should be a little bit (about 0%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 56 (0%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 450 1GB is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		12528 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		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

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GeForce GTS 450 1GB

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Radeon HD 4850 2GB

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Specifications

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Model	GeForce GTS 450 1GB	Radeon HD 4850 2GB
Manufacturer	nVidia	AMD
Year	September 2010	Jun 25, 2008
Code Name	GF106	RV770 PRO
Memory	1024 MB	2048 MB
Core Speed	783 MHz	625 MHz
Memory Speed	3608 MHz	1986 MHz
Power (Max TDP)	106 watts	110 watts
Bandwidth	57728 MB/sec	63552 MB/sec
Texel Rate	25056 Mtexels/sec	25000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	12528 Mpixels/sec	10000 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders	192	800(160x5)
Texture Mapping Units	32	40
Render Output Units	16	16
Bus Type	GDDR5	GDDR4
Bus Width	128-bit	256-bit
Fab Process	40 nm	55 nm
Transistors	1170 million	956 million
Bus	PCIe x16	PCIe 2.0 x16
DirectX Version	DirectX 11	DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 4.1	OpenGL 3.0

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a 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 called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.

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