GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB vs GeForce GTS 450 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTS 450 1GB, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 783 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 902 MHz on this card. It features 192 SPUs as well as 32 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		106 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		143 Watts
	Difference: 37 Watts (35%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB should in theory perform a small bit faster than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		63360 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 5632 (10%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 1GB will be just a bit (approximately 2%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 432 (2%)

Pixel Rate

If running with 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
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		10260 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2268 (22%)

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 transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.