Radeon HD 4870 X2 vs Radeon HD 5450

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5450		19 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 331 Watts (1742%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 should be much faster than the Radeon HD 5450 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5450		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 217600 (1700%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 should be much (approximately 1054%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5450. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5450		5200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 54800 (1054%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4870 X2 is superior to the Radeon HD 5450, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5450		2600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21400 (823%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.