GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs Radeon HD 4850 2GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, which comes with clock speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR4 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs 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 4850 2GB		110 Watts
	Difference: 4 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4850 2GB should be a small bit faster than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 5824 (10%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 1GB should be a bit (approximately 0%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 56 (0%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 450 1GB is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		12528 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels 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 Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.