Radeon HD 5450 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6870, which comes with core clock speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1050 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1120 SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5450		19 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 132 Watts (695%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6870 should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the Radeon HD 5450 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5450		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 121600 (950%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 is much (approximately 869%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5450. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5450		5200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 45200 (869%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6870 is superior to the Radeon HD 5450, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5450		2600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 26200 (1008%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must 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 higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This 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 graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one 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 figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.