GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs GeForce GTX 580 3GB

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 580 3GB, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 772 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1002 MHz on this model. It features 512 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		106 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 138 Watts (130%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB should in theory perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 134656 (233%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB is much (more or less 97%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24352 (97%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is superior to the GeForce GTS 450 1GB, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24528 (196%)

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 worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.