GeForce GTS 450 vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which features a clock frequency of 625 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 993 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It features 800(160x5) 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		106 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
	Difference: 4 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4850 512MB will be 10% faster than the GeForce GTS 450 in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 5824 (10%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 is a bit (approximately 0%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 56 (0%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 should be quite a bit (about 25%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, and also able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		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 max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

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