GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB vs GeForce GTS 450 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTS 450 1GB, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 783 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 902 MHz on this particular model. It features 192 SPUs as well as 32 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		106 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		143 Watts
	Difference: 37 Watts (35%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB should theoretically be a small bit better than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		63360 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 5632 (10%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 1GB should be a little bit (more or less 2%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		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, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		12528 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		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 max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.