GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 775 MHz. The GDDR4 memory is set to run at a speed of 1125 MHz on this model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 3870 1GB should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 1GB is a lot (about 102%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 450 1GB is superior to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, but not by far. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.