GeForce GT 450 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB, which comes with a core clock speed of 825 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB should in theory be a little bit faster than the GeForce GT 450 (OEM) overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB is much (more or less 39%) better at AF than the GeForce GT 450 (OEM). (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		18960 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7440 (39%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB is superior to the GeForce GT 450 (OEM), by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		18960 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7440 (39%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.