Radeon HD 5850 vs Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB, which comes with a clock frequency of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also features a 64-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 160 SPUs, 8 Texture Address Units, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB		31 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 120 Watts (387%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5850 should in theory be a lot better than the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 99200 (344%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 is a lot (approximately 770%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB		6000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 46200 (770%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5850 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB		3000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20200 (673%)

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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling 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 that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends 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.