GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) vs Radeon HD 5450

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5450, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 650 MHz. The DDR3 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 800 MHz on this particular card. It features 80(16x5) SPUs along with 8 TAUs and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5450		19 Watts
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		47 Watts
	Difference: 28 Watts (147%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same bandwidth, so theoretically they should have identical performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) is much (more or less 66%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5450. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		8640 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5450		5200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3440 (66%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) is quite a bit (more or less 66%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5450, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		4320 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5450		2600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1720 (66%)

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 moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends 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.