GeForce 8800 GT 512MB vs GeForce GTS 450 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTS 450 1GB, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 783 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 902 MHz on this specific card. It features 192 SPUs along with 32 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 1 Watts (1%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTS 450 1GB should theoretically be just a bit faster than the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 128 (0%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GT 512MB will be quite a bit (approximately 34%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8544 (34%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 450 1GB is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		12528 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2928 (31%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This 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 graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's 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 fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.