GeForce 8500 GT vs Radeon HD 6450 (OEM)

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM), which comes with a core clock frequency of 625 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 800 MHz. It also features a 64-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 160 SPUs, 8 Texture Address Units, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6450 (OEM)		31 Watts
GeForce 8500 GT		45 Watts
	Difference: 14 Watts (45%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same memory bandwidth, so in theory they should have the same performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) should be a lot (about 39%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

Radeon HD 6450 (OEM)		5000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1400 (39%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6450 (OEM)		2500 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		1800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 700 (39%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the 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 number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.