GeForce GTS 450 vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 775 MHz. The GDDR4 RAM works at a frequency of 1125 MHz on this card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3870 1GB should be much faster than the GeForce GTS 450 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 will be quite a bit (approximately 102%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 450 is superior to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, though not by far. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		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 transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock 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 quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.