Radeon HD 3850 512MB vs Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB		31 Watts
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
	Difference: 44 Watts (142%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3850 512MB is 84% faster than the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 24192 (84%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 512MB should be much (more or less 78%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB		6000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4688 (78%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 512MB is a lot (about 256%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB, and capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB		3000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7688 (256%)

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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. 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, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.