Radeon HD 5550 vs Radeon HD 6450 (OEM)

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM), which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 625 MHz. The GDDR3 memory runs at a frequency of 800 MHz on this particular model. It features 160 SPUs along with 8 TAUs and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same bandwidth, so in theory they should have the same performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5550 should be quite a bit (approximately 76%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM). (explain)

Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6450 (OEM)		5000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3800 (76%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5550 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6450 (OEM)		2500 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1900 (76%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the 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 that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.