GeForce 9800 GT 1GB vs GeForce GTS 450 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTS 450 1GB, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 783 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 902 MHz on this card. It features 192 SPUs as well as 32 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		105 Watts
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 1 Watts (1%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTS 450 1GB should perform a bit faster than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 128 (0%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GT 1GB should be a lot (about 34%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		33600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8544 (34%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 450 1GB is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		12528 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2928 (31%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of 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 per second.

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