Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which comes with a core clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1408 SPUs, 88 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB		31 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 169 Watts (545%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB should in theory be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 131200 (456%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB should be quite a bit (about 1073%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB		6000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 64400 (1073%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 2GB is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB		3000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22600 (753%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.