Radeon HD 3850 512MB vs Radeon HD 5450

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5450, which has a core clock frequency of 650 MHz and a DDR3 memory frequency of 800 MHz. It also makes use of a 64-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 80(16x5) SPUs, 8 TAUs, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5450		19 Watts
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
	Difference: 56 Watts (295%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3850 512MB will be 314% faster than the Radeon HD 5450 overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5450		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 40192 (314%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 512MB should be quite a bit (more or less 106%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5450. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5450		5200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5488 (106%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 512MB is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

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