Radeon HD 4870 512MB vs Radeon HD 5450

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5450, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 650 MHz. The DDR3 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 800 MHz on this particular model. It features 80(16x5) 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 5450		19 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
	Difference: 131 Watts (689%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 512MB should theoretically perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 5450 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5450		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 102400 (800%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 512MB will be much (more or less 477%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5450. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5450		5200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24800 (477%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 512MB should be much (about 362%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 5450, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5450		2600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9400 (362%)

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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core 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 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.