Radeon HD 5450 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7870, which comes with core speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5450		19 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 156 Watts (821%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 7870 should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 5450 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5450		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 140800 (1100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 is much (more or less 1438%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 5450. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5450		5200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 74800 (1438%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 is quite a bit (approximately 1131%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 5450, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5450		2600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 29400 (1131%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must 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, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.