GeForce GTS 450 vs Radeon HD 4850 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, which features GPU core speed of 625 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR4 memory running at 993 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450		106 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		110 Watts
	Difference: 4 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

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

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 will be just a bit (approximately 0%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 will be much (approximately 25%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, and also capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video 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 amount 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of 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.