GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs GeForce GTX 260

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 260, which uses a 65 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 576 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 999 MHz on this specific model. It features 192 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 28 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		106 Watts
GeForce GTX 260		182 Watts
	Difference: 76 Watts (72%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 260 should theoretically be much better than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		111888 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 54160 (94%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 will be much (approximately 47%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11808 (47%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 is a lot (about 29%) better at AA than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		16128 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3600 (29%)

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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core 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 maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units 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 also depends 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.