GeForce 8400 GS 512MB vs Radeon HD 5450

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5450, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 650 MHz, and 512 MB of DDR3 RAM running at 800 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also features 80(16x5) SPUs, 8 TAUs, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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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

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 5450 should in theory be quite a bit better than the GeForce 8400 GS 512MB overall. (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 theoretically they should perform equally good at at FSAA, and be capable of handling the same screen 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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.