GeForce 8500 GT vs Radeon HD 5450

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5450, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 650 MHz. The DDR3 RAM is set to run at a speed of 800 MHz on this model. It features 80(16x5) SPUs as well as 8 Texture Address Units and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5450		19 Watts
GeForce 8500 GT		45 Watts
	Difference: 26 Watts (137%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same bandwidth, so theoretically they should perform the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5450 should be quite a bit (about 44%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

Radeon HD 5450		5200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (44%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5450 is a lot (more or less 44%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8500 GT, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 5450		2600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		1800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 800 (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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics 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 number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.