GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6790, which comes with a core clock speed of 840 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1050 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 800 SPUs, 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 6790		150 Watts
	Difference: 44 Watts (42%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6790 should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 76672 (133%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 should be a lot (about 34%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8544 (34%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6790 is a better choice, but not by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 912 (7%)

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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.