GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 vs Radeon HD 5450

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5450, which features GPU core speed of 650 MHz, and 512 MB of DDR3 RAM set to run at 800 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also features 80(16x5) SPUs, 8 TAUs, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5450		19 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		84 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (342%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512, in theory, should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 5450 in general. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		16000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5450		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 should be a lot (approximately 408%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5450. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		26400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5450		5200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 21200 (408%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		6600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5450		2600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (154%)

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 across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.