GeForce 8800 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 5450

Intro

The GeForce 8800 GT 512MB makes use of a 65 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 600 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 900 MHz on this particular model. It features 112 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5450, which has core clock speeds of 650 MHz on the GPU, and 800 MHz on the 512 MB of DDR3 memory. It features 80(16x5) SPUs along with 8 TAUs and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.