GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 5450

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5450, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 650 MHz. The DDR3 memory runs at a frequency of 800 MHz on this card. It features 80(16x5) SPUs along with 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 9600 GT 512MB		95 Watts
	Difference: 76 Watts (400%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB should in theory be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 5450 overall. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5450		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 44800 (350%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GT 512MB will be quite a bit (more or less 300%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5450. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5450		5200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15600 (300%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5450		2600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7800 (300%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once 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 high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as 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, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.