In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the AMD Radeon HD 7850 XFX Ultra OC Edition are massively better than the Nvidia GeForce GTS 450 v4 Gainward 1GB Edition.

The HD 7850 has a 192 MHz higher core clock speed and 40 more Texture Mapping Units than the GTS 450. This results in the HD 7850 providing 43.6 GTexel/s better texturing performance. This still holds weight but shader performance is generally more relevant, particularly since both of these GPUs support at least DirectX 10.

The HD 7850 has a 192 MHz higher core clock speed and 16 more Render Output Units than the GTS 450. This results in the HD 7850 providing 18.7 GPixel/s better pixeling performance. However, both GPUs support DirectX 9 or above, and pixeling performance is only really relevant when comparing older cards.

The GTS 450 was released less than a year after the HD 7850, and so they are likely to have similar driver support for optimizing performance when running the latest games.

The GeForce GTS 450 v4 Gainward 1GB Edition and the Radeon HD 7850 XFX Ultra OC Edition have the same amount of video memory, but are likely to provide slightly different experiences when displaying game textures at high resolutions.

The HD 7850 has 131.2 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the GTS 450, which means that the memory performance of the HD 7850 is massively better than the GTS 450.

The GeForce GTS 450 v4 Gainward 1GB Edition has 144 Shader Processing Units and the Radeon HD 7850 XFX Ultra OC Edition has 1024. However, the actual shader performance of the GTS 450 is 226 and the actual shader performance of the HD 7850 is 849. The HD 7850 having 623 better shader performance and an altogether better performance when taking into account other relevant data means that the HD 7850 delivers a massively smoother and more efficient experience when processing graphical data than the GTS 450.

The HD 7850 transistor size technology is 12 nm (nanometers) smaller than the GTS 450. This means that the HD 7850 is expected to run slightly cooler and achieve higher clock frequencies than the GTS 450.

The GeForce GTS 450 v4 Gainward 1GB Edition requires 96 Watts to run but there is no entry for the Radeon HD 7850 XFX Ultra OC Edition. We would recommend a PSU with at least 400 Watts for the GTS 450 and a PSU with at least 500 Watts for the HD 7850. The HD 7850 has been recommended a PSU with 100 Watts more than the GTS 450. The difference is significant enough that the HD 7850 may have an adverse affect on your yearly electricity bills in comparison to the GTS 450.