GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon HD 5450

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5450, which features a clock frequency of 650 MHz and a DDR3 memory speed of 800 MHz. It also makes use of a 64-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 80(16x5) SPUs, 8 Texture Address Units, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5450		19 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 231 Watts (1216%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 480 should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 5450 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5450		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 164608 (1286%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 should be quite a bit (about 708%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5450. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5450		5200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36800 (708%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 should be a lot (more or less 1192%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 5450, and able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5450		2600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 31000 (1192%)

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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the 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 card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core 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 output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.