GeForce GTS 450 vs GeForce GTX 590

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 590, which comes with a clock speed of 607 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 855 MHz. It also features a 384-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 512 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

GeForce GTX 590		6680 points
GeForce GTS 450		1453 points
	Difference: 5227 (360%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450		106 Watts
GeForce GTX 590		365 Watts
	Difference: 259 Watts (244%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 590 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTS 450 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		328320 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 270592 (469%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 590 should be a lot (about 210%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTS 450. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		77696 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 52640 (210%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 590 should be quite a bit (approximately 365%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GTS 450, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 45744 (365%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's 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 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure 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 filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.