GeForce GT 450 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 775 MHz. The GDDR4 memory runs at a frequency of 1125 MHz on this specific model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GT 450 (OEM) is 33% faster than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		96000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 24000 (33%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 450 (OEM) should be much (approximately 53%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		18960 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6560 (53%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GT 450 (OEM) is superior to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		18960 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6560 (53%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core 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 applied per second.

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