GeForce GTS 450 vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 625 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a speed of 993 MHz on this model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450		106 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		250 Watts
	Difference: 144 Watts (136%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB will be 120% faster than the GeForce GTS 450 in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		127104 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 69376 (120%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB will be much (more or less 100%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 450. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24944 (100%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

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