GeForce GT 450 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5870, which features a GPU core clock speed of 850 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1600(320x5) SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		106 Watts
Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 82 Watts (77%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5870 should in theory be much superior to the GeForce GT 450 (OEM) overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 57600 (60%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 will be a lot (approximately 259%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GT 450 (OEM). (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		18960 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 49040 (259%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5870 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		18960 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8240 (43%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the 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 are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.