GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs Radeon HD 4830 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4830 512MB, which features clock speeds of 575 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 640(128x5) SPUs as well as 32 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4830 512MB		95 Watts
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 11 Watts (12%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTS 450 1GB will be 0% faster than the Radeon HD 4830 512MB overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 128 (0%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 1GB will be quite a bit (about 36%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4830 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		18400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6656 (36%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 450 1GB is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		12528 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		9200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3328 (36%)

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 max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 texture map elements (texels) that are 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 higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.