GeForce GTS 450 vs GeForce GTX 285 2GB

Intro

The GeForce GTS 450 uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 783 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 902 MHz on this particular model. It features 192 SPUs as well as 32 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 285 2GB, which uses a 55 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 648 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1242 MHz on this card. It features 240 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling 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 card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.