GeForce GT 450 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB, which comes with core speeds of 825 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB should in theory be a bit superior to the GeForce GT 450 (OEM) in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB should be much (about 39%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 450 (OEM). (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		18960 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7440 (39%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB is superior to the GeForce GT 450 (OEM), and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		18960 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7440 (39%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

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