GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon HD 5450

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5450		19 Watts
GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
	Difference: 56 Watts (295%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce 8600 GTS should theoretically be much better than the Radeon HD 5450 in general. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5450		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (150%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GTS is quite a bit (approximately 108%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5450. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5450		5200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (108%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GTS should be quite a bit (approximately 108%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 5450, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5450		2600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2800 (108%)

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

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the 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 the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.