Radeon HD 5450 vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5870, which has core clock speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1600(320x5) SPUs as well as 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 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 169 Watts (889%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5870 is 1100% faster than the Radeon HD 5450 overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5450		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 140800 (1100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 is a lot (more or less 1208%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5450. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5450		5200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 62800 (1208%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 will be quite a bit (more or less 946%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 5450, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5450		2600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24600 (946%)

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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.