Radeon HD 5450 vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 270, which comes with a clock frequency of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1400 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5450		19 Watts
Radeon R9 270		150 Watts
	Difference: 131 Watts (689%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 270, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 5450 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5450		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 166400 (1300%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 is quite a bit (about 1285%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5450. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5450		5200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 66800 (1285%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270 is superior to the Radeon HD 5450, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5450		2600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 26200 (1008%)

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 max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 amount 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 this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.