GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 5450

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5450, which comes with a clock frequency of 650 MHz and a DDR3 memory frequency of 800 MHz. It also uses a 64-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 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
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 178 Watts (937%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should be 900% quicker than the Radeon HD 5450 overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5450		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 115200 (900%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be quite a bit (about 1377%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5450. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5450		5200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 71600 (1377%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GX2 is superior to the Radeon HD 5450, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5450		2600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16600 (638%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core 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 also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.