GeForce GTS 450 vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 625 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a speed of 993 MHz on this specific card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450		106 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		250 Watts
	Difference: 144 Watts (136%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTS 450 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		127104 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 69376 (120%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB is quite a bit (about 100%) better at AF than the GeForce GTS 450. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24944 (100%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB will be quite a bit (about 60%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GTS 450, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		20000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7472 (60%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better 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 one second.

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