Radeon HD 3870 1GB vs Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 900 MHz on this model. It features 160 SPUs as well as 8 Texture Address Units and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB		31 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (242%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3870 1GB should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 43200 (150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB will be much (approximately 107%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB		6000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6400 (107%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB will be quite a bit (more or less 313%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB		3000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9400 (313%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are 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 better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.