GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which has GPU clock speed of 750 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		106 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 244 Watts (230%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 172672 (299%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 will be much (approximately 139%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34944 (139%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 is quite a bit (approximately 92%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB, and able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11472 (92%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is worked out 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 card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.