Radeon HD 3870 512MB vs Radeon HD 5450

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5450, which has clock speeds of 650 MHz on the GPU, and 800 MHz on the 512 MB of DDR3 RAM. It features 80(16x5) SPUs as well as 8 TAUs and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5450		19 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
	Difference: 87 Watts (458%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 3870 512MB should be much faster than the Radeon HD 5450 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5450		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 44800 (350%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 512MB should be quite a bit (more or less 138%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 5450. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5450		5200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7200 (138%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 512MB is quite a bit (approximately 377%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5450, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5450		2600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9800 (377%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number 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 filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.