Radeon HD 3850 X2 vs Radeon HD 6450 (OEM)

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM), which comes with a clock frequency of 625 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 800 MHz. It also uses a 64-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 160 SPUs, 8 TAUs, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 3850 X2 should theoretically be much better than the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6450 (OEM)		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 93184 (728%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 will be much (more or less 328%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM). (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6450 (OEM)		5000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16376 (328%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 will be quite a bit (approximately 755%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM), and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6450 (OEM)		2500 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18876 (755%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number 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 maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number 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 output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.