GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 5450

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5450, which comes with a clock speed of 650 MHz and a DDR3 memory speed of 800 MHz. It also uses a 64-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 80(16x5) SPUs, 8 Texture Address Units, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5450		19 Watts
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		47 Watts
	Difference: 28 Watts (147%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same memory bandwidth, so in theory they should perform exactly the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 will be quite a bit (more or less 66%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 5450. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5450		5200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3440 (66%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 is quite a bit (approximately 66%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 5450, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5450		2600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1720 (66%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. 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 many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.