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

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 900 MHz on this card. It features 160 SPUs as well as 8 TAUs and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB		31 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (242%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 3870 1GB should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 43200 (150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB should be a lot (about 107%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB		6000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6400 (107%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 1GB is superior to the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB		3000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9400 (313%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, 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 number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.