GeForce 8800 GS 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 frequency at 783 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 902 MHz on this model. It features 192 SPUs along with 32 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GS		105 Watts
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 1 Watts (1%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTS 450 1GB, in theory, should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8800 GS overall. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 19328 (50%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GS is a little bit (approximately 5%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GS		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1344 (5%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 1GB should be quite a bit (approximately 90%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce 8800 GS, and should be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		12528 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5928 (90%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

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