GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs Radeon HD 4850 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, which comes with core speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR4 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4850 1GB should be 10% faster than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 1GB will be a small bit (approximately 0%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 450 1GB is superior to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		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 MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video 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 amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.