GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs Radeon HD 4650 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4650 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 600 MHz. The DDR2 memory runs at a frequency of 500 MHz on this specific card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 32 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTS 450 1GB should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4650 512MB overall. (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 quite a bit (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

If running with lots of anti-aliasing 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 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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better 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 most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in a 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 - aka 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, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.