Radeon HD 3850 256MB vs Radeon HD 5450

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5450, which features GPU core speed of 650 MHz, and 512 MB of DDR3 memory running at 800 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also features 80(16x5) Stream Processors, 8 Texture Address Units, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5450		19 Watts
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		75 Watts
	Difference: 56 Watts (295%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3850 256MB should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 5450 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5450		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 40192 (314%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 256MB should be a lot (about 106%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 5450. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5450		5200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5488 (106%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 256MB is quite a bit (about 311%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 5450, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5450		2600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8088 (311%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of MB 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. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.