GeForce GTS 450 vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which comes with core clock speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450		106 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
	Difference: 4 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4850 512MB should theoretically perform just a bit faster than the GeForce GTS 450 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 5824 (10%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 should be just a bit (more or less 0%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 56 (0%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 is much (more or less 25%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2528 (25%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.