Radeon HD 5450 vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6950, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1250 MHz on this specific model. It features 1408 SPUs as well as 88 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5450		19 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 181 Watts (953%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6950 should theoretically perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 5450 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5450		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 147200 (1150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 will be a lot (about 1254%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5450. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5450		5200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 65200 (1254%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 will be quite a bit (approximately 885%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 5450, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5450		2600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23000 (885%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core 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 output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.