GeForce 9800 GTX vs GeForce GTS 450

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTS 450, which features a core clock frequency of 783 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 902 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 192 SPUs, 32 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
GeForce 9800 GTX		140 Watts
	Difference: 34 Watts (32%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce 9800 GTX should in theory be quite a bit superior to the GeForce GTS 450 in general. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		70400 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 12672 (22%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GTX is much (more or less 72%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTS 450. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		43200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18144 (72%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 450 is the winner, though only just barely. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		10800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1728 (16%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the 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 amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.