GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5850, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 725 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1000 MHz on this card. It features 1440(288x5) SPUs as well as 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 1GB		106 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (42%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 5850 should in theory perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 70272 (122%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 should be quite a bit (approximately 108%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 27144 (108%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 will be quite a bit (about 85%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB, and able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the 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 amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel 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 get to the max fill rate.