GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB, which comes with a core clock speed of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also uses a 64-bit bus, and uses 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
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
	Difference: 16 Watts (52%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB		28800 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (125%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 should be a lot (approximately 44%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB		6000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2640 (44%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 is superior to the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB, by far. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB		3000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1320 (44%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better 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 most pixels the video card can 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 Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. 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 also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.