GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs Radeon HD 4830 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4830 512MB, which comes with a clock frequency of 575 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 640(128x5) SPUs, 32 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4830 512MB		95 Watts
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 11 Watts (12%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTS 450 1GB will be 0% faster than the Radeon HD 4830 512MB overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 128 (0%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 1GB will be much (about 36%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4830 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		18400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6656 (36%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 450 1GB is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		12528 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		9200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3328 (36%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.