GeForce GT 450 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 900 MHz on this specific model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		106 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
	Difference: 44 Watts (42%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4870 512MB should in theory be a small bit superior to the GeForce GT 450 (OEM) in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 512MB will be quite a bit (more or less 58%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GT 450 (OEM). (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		18960 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11040 (58%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GT 450 (OEM) is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		18960 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6960 (58%)

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 across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be 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 better the texel rate, the better the video 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 amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.