Radeon HD 4870 X2 vs Radeon HD 5450

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5450, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 650 MHz. The DDR3 RAM works at a speed of 800 MHz on this particular card. It features 80(16x5) SPUs as well as 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
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 331 Watts (1742%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the Radeon HD 5450 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 will be much (approximately 1054%) better 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 a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4870 X2 is a better choice, by far. (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of 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 the video card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.