GeForce GTS 450 vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5850, which features a core clock frequency of 725 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1440(288x5) SPUs, 72 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450		106 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (42%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5850 should in theory be quite a bit better than the GeForce GTS 450 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 70272 (122%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 should be much (approximately 108%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTS 450. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 27144 (108%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 will be a lot (about 85%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GTS 450, and also capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10672 (85%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its 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 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 also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.