GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs Radeon HD 4650 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4650 512MB, which features core clock speeds of 600 MHz on the GPU, and 500 MHz on the 512 MB of DDR2 memory. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 32 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4650 512MB		55 Watts
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 51 Watts (93%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTS 450 1GB, in theory, should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4650 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4650 512MB		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 41728 (261%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 1GB should be much (about 31%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4650 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4650 512MB		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5856 (31%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 1GB is a lot (approximately 161%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4650 512MB, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		12528 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4650 512MB		4800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7728 (161%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video 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 amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.