GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which comes with clock speeds of 775 MHz on the GPU, and 1125 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR4 RAM. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3870 1GB is 25% quicker than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 14272 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 1GB will be much (approximately 102%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12656 (102%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 1GB is a small bit (about 1%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		12528 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 128 (1%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 processed in one 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 graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.