Radeon HD 5450 vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6950, which has a GPU core clock speed of 800 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1408 SPUs, 88 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5450		19 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 181 Watts (953%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6950, in theory, should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 5450 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5450		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 147200 (1150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 is a lot (about 1254%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5450. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5450		5200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 65200 (1254%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5450		2600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23000 (885%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.