GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs Radeon HD 4790

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4790, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 600 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 800 MHz on this card. It features 640(128x5) SPUs as well as 32 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4790 should in theory be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4790		102400 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 44672 (77%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 1GB is quite a bit (approximately 31%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4790. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5856 (31%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 450 1GB is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		12528 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2928 (31%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.