GeForce 8400 GS 512MB vs Radeon HD 5450

Intro

Compare those specifications 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 Texture Address Units and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5450		19 Watts
GeForce 8400 GS 512MB		40 Watts
	Difference: 21 Watts (111%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5450 should be 100% faster than the GeForce 8400 GS 512MB overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 5450		12800 MB/sec
GeForce 8400 GS 512MB		6400 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (100%)

Texel Rate

Both cards have the exact same texel fill rate, so in theory they should perform equally good at at anisotropic filtering. (explain)

Pixel Rate

Both cards have the exact same pixel fill rate, so in theory they should perform equally good at at full screen anti-aliasing, and be able to handle the same resolutions. (explain)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total 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 one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. 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 rate is also dependant 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.