GeForce GTS 450 vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which features GPU clock speed of 775 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR4 memory running at 1125 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3870 1GB is 25% quicker than the GeForce GTS 450 in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 14272 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 is quite a bit (approximately 102%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12656 (102%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 450 is a better choice, but only just. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 128 (1%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record 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 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 output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.