Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB vs Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB, which has GPU clock speed of 750 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 900 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also features 160 SPUs, 8 Texture Address Units, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB should theoretically perform much faster than the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 115328 (400%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB will be much (more or less 340%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB		6000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20400 (340%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB will be a lot (about 780%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB		3000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23400 (780%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 are processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.